Miami.- An 18-month-old baby died of hyperthermia after being forgotten for about eight hours inside a car parked outdoors in central Florida and her parents were arrested and charged with “aggravated involuntary manslaughter of a minor,” they reported Thursday. The authorities.
The event occurred on July 4, US Independence Day, when Joel and Jazmine Rondon, both 33-year-old parents of the baby, returned to their home in the city of Lakeland late at night. after a party and forgot the girl tied to her seat in the back of the car.
It was not until eleven in the morning of the following day that the father, after not finding the little girl in the house, looked for her and found her in the car in the sun under “extreme heat” already at that time of day, said this The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Thursday.
In a panic, Joel Rondon dragged the girl still strapped to her seat out of the car, brought her into the house, and he and his wife immediately took her to the Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center, where doctors could do nothing to revive her.
The baby’s internal body temperature reached 104.4 degrees Fahrenheit (40.02 degrees Celsius). The autopsy carried out determined that the girl died of hyperthermia.
“The car was parked outside, not in a garage, not under a tree, not under any shade. The investigation shows us that the temperature of the car could have been between 130 and 170 degrees (Fahrenheit) at that time” (54-76 degrees Celsius), Sheriff Grady Judd said.
Authorities said the parents tested positive for alcohol and marijuana, which they had consumed at the party, and Joel Rondon also tested positive for methamphetamine.
Two other children of the couple were released by authorities to close relatives while the Florida Department of Children and Families conducts an investigation.
Leaving a child in a vehicle is a very high-risk situation that in the United States alone has left 950 dead from heat stroke (hyperthermia) from 1998 to the present, according to data from the No Heat Stroke organization.
So far this year there have been 10 child deaths for this reason in the United States (including the Lakeland girl), while in 2022 a total of 33 deaths were reported.
Texas is the state with the highest number of child motor vehicle deaths from heat stroke between 1998 and 2022, with 138 cases, followed by Florida (102) and California (56), according to No Heat Stroke statistics.
