Silke Jasso
A three-month old baby in Indiana is the latest victim to die due to being trapped in a hot car. The father of the three-month old, Aaron Turner, stated his son was with his mother and his sister at the time. Their son, Aiden Miller, was supposed to go to daycare, but never made it. Turner is sharing his story with the public in the hope it will remind people of the dangers of leaving a child in a hot car.
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According to Turner, the mother forget about Aiden in the back seat of her car after dropping off their two-year-old daughter at daycare. The mother was also supposed to drop of Aiden at his daycare, but forgot he was in the car, which is why she proceeded to go inside her workplace. When she returned at around 4:30 pm, Turner said his wife was confronted with a heavy smell inside the car and found the child was unresponsive. The mother pulled him out of the infant car seat, brought him inside the care center she worked at, and attempted to resuscitate him by performing CPR. Unfortunately, Aiden was pronounced dead after arriving at Baptist Floyd Hospital.
The New Albany police department has launched an investigation into the child’s death, and no charges have been made as of now.
Read More: Children Should Never Be Left Alone in a Hot Car, But It’s Still Happening
In 2017, there were 42 heatstroke deaths of children in vehicles; a 63% increase from 2015. National #Heatstroke Prevention Day is July 31. Find and share information for parents, caregivers, schools and organizations #LookBeforeYouLock https://t.co/UhI8nnJzSs pic.twitter.com/wJnLWqMzDz
— AAA Kansas News 🚘✈️ (@AAAKansasNews) July 27, 2018
In the U.S. hot car deaths are a consistent problem. An average of 37 children die each year from being left in hot cars. Aiden is the 29th person in the United States to die inside of a locked car in 2018. Unfortunately, these cases tend to happen most during hot summer months, and usually involve toddlers. Nationwide, law enforcement has encouraged drivers to always check their back seats for children who may have been forgotten.
Just last week, a three-year-old boy in Houston was discovered by his father inside a daycare center bus after being left behind from a field trip hours earlier. Authorities recorded the temperature of the bus at 113 Fahrenheit. The boy was one of the 28 students from the “Discovering Me Academy” who were taken to a nearby park for a field trip earlier in the day. According to authorities, the children were loaded into the van around 10 a.m. and returned to the daycare between 2 and 2:20 p.m. The school records show the boy had been listed as accounted for, but when the boy’s father came to pick him up at 6:30 p.m. that day, officers discover the boy was still on the bus.
The Kids in Hot Cars organization, an group that helps promote car safety, would like to remind parents that it only takes 10 minutes for the temperature inside a vehicle to rise 20- degrees. For children, this increase is enough to result in death. A few tips to avoid being in situations like these include:
Never leave a child alone in a car, even for a minute. You should also keep your car locked when you’re not inside so children don’t get in on their own.
- Create reminders. Keep a memento in your child’s car seat, and use it as a visual reminder when your child is in the vehicle.
- Take action. If you see a child alone in a car call 911, you can easily save a life in a matter of seconds.
- Teach kids not to play in cars to avoid them from sneaking inside and potentially getting locked in.
- If you regularly drop your child off at a daycare, create a calendar or reminder on your phone to make sure you’ve done so.
