Baby girl may be latest hot-car victim
Weslaco mother charged after baby found in hot car
Mom charged after daughter dies of apparent heat exposure in Brownsville
NORTH OF PALMVIEW — Hidalgo County lost a young resident Saturday when a 1 1/2-year-old girl died after apparently being left in a hot vehicle.
The child was found in a car about 7:30 p.m. outside a house near Mile 5 North and Western Avenue. She was unconscious when emergency responders arrived at the scene and died later at Mission Regional Medical Center.
It remained unclear Sunday what the circumstances of the incident were and whether there would be any arrest made.
The cause of death has not been officially determined, but most young children who die in cars succumb to hyperthermia, which occurs when they overheat in closed vehicles.
If confirmed as a hyperthermia death, this would be the ninth in the nation so far this year, according to the Safe Kids Never Leave Your Child Alone in a Car Texas Task Force. There were 49 nationwide deaths from the phenomenon last year, including 13 in Texas.
In a statement on Saturday’s death, the task force urged citizens to read “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car is a Horrifying Mistake. Is it a Crime?” to gain perspective. The article, published in 2009 by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, won a 2010 Pulitzer Prize.
The bodies of small children heat up three to five times faster than adults, according to the task force. On hot days, the temperature inside cars can rise to 20 degrees higher than the outside in just 20 minutes and 45 degrees higher within an hour.
Texas had by far the highest number of child vehicular hyperthermia deaths between 1998 and 2010, according to Jan Null, a meteorology professor at San Francisco State University. The state had 71 such deaths during those years, followed by 56 in Florida, 36 in California and 23 in Arizona.
Most of the deaths occurred when children accidentally were forgotten inside cars, and more than half involved children younger than 2.
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Monitor staff writer Ildefonso Ortiz contributed to this report.
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Elizabeth Findell covers Pharr, San Juan, Alamo, the Mid-Valley and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4428.
