Man Charged With Leaving 4-Year-Old Child In Hot Car

Sign up for the Sandy Springs Patch newsletter!

---

A 34-year-old resident has been charged with leaving a four-year-old child inside a hot vehicle late Friday morning.

Michael Brandon Welch was charged by Sandy Springs police with reckless conduct in connection to the incident.

An officer was dispatched by ChatComm 911 to a parking deck at 1200 Abernathy Road just before 11 a.m. Friday.

A security guard, who called police, told the officer she was performing security rounds when she discovered a child in the backseat of a 2013 Nissan Leaf, according to an incident report released by the agency.

The woman said she found the child around 10:35 a.m., and said Welch returned to the car around 10:56 a.m. -- around the same time the officer arrived at the parking deck.

According to the report, the man told police he was “only gone for about 15 minutes.”

Welch allegedly told the officer the car was turned off, which prompted the officer to ask Welch to turn on the car “so we could get some air to the child.”

“I then opened the back door and felt inside the vehicle,” the officer wrote in his report. “The vehicle was very warm inside. [The] sun was hitting the back of the vehicle where it was backed into a parking space.”

Welch also told authorities he “cracked the windows” for the child. However, the officer told Welch that ”a four year old should not have been left in the vehicle, regardless of the temperature.”

An instant infrared thermometer used to measure temperature noted it was 91.7 degrees inside the car while it was 103.4 outside the vehicle.

Welch was transported to the Fulton County Jail’s Alpharetta annex, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for Aug. 10 at Sandy Springs Municipal Court.

The child, who did not show any signs of distress and needed no medical attention, was subsequently given a bottle of water to drink and was released to his mother.

---

Photo credit: Sandy Springs Police