30 Children Died in Hot Cars in U.S. Last Year

By Deb Belt (Patch Staff)

The stories are predictable right about this time every year: Parent puts baby in back seat, parent drives somewhere intending to drop off baby, parent forgets baby in back seat. Then, with sad regularity, the baby dies from heatstroke.

Aside from the lost child, the cases often destroy parents and perplex judicial systems that struggle with how to hold accountable adults whose guilt already cages them.

Last year, that happened 30 times to 30 babies.

That statistic is a reminder as temperatures soared above 90 degrees across New England this week.

The first hot-car death of 2015 was recorded in April in Phoenix, AZ, when a man who had been drinking reportedly fell asleep with his sons in the car. One survived but the younger son was found dead inside the vehicle; charges have been filed.

SEE ALSO: Dad Charged; Child Dies After 16 Hours in Hot Car

But police and prosecutors nationwide wrestle with what to do with parents as the number of such deaths -- where there are no obvious signs of neglect involved -- begin to rise with the temperatures.

For every case of a parent who is impaired with a child in the car or who leaves a baby in a vehicle with the window open just a bit, there are executive dads and busy moms who simply forget that their child is in the back seat during a hectic day.

Common factors in the cases are stress, parents functioning on too little sleep or a change in daily routine, say experts.

And it falls to the prosecutor in each locale to decide if a soul-destroying mistake is also a crime. A Virginia man, Miles Harrison, was ultimately found not guilty of manslaughter several years ago after leaving his son, Chase, instead of dropping him off at day care.

The Washington Post described Harrison’s anguish in court as he cried for his baby, adopted by Harrison and his wife from Russia, the happy boy who transformed the couple into a family. “I hurt my wife so much,” he told the newspaper “and by the grace of whatever wonderful quality is within her, she has forgiven me. And that makes me feel even worse. Because I can’t forgive me.”

In 2014, the national tally for child heatstroke deaths from being left in cars was 30, down from a total of 44 in 2013, according to the Kids and Cars website, which works to prevent accidental child deaths.

A Georgia father, Justin Harris, faces murder charges for leaving his young son, Cooper, in a hot car for seven hours while he worked. Maryland father John Junek, who reportedly forgot his son was in the back of his vehicle, faces an involuntary manslaughter charge after the child was found dead at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.

A Connecticut man charged with the hot-car death of his 15-month-old son received leniency from a judge last month and will avoid jail time for forgetting his toddler was in his car.

Read Also:

• How Hot Does it Get in a Parked Car?
• One Day, Three Incidents of Children Left in Hot Cars in CT [UPDATE]
• Father Charged With Murder Researched Child Car Deaths