One-year-old girl dies after being left in hot car all day in Texas, sheriff says

A one-year-old girl has died after being left in a hot car all day in the Houston area, authorities said.

On Thursday morning, the baby’s mother drove three children – ages 5, 3 and 1 – to daycare, where she dropped off the 5 and 3-year-olds, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.

The mother returned home and spent her day and apparently changed cars at one point, Gonzalez said.

She returned to daycare late Thursday afternoon, expecting to pick up three children, but staff told her only two had been dropped off, the sheriff said.

The mother returned home where she found the one-year-old girl in the back seat of a car at around 6 p.m. Harris County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ben Beall told reporters.

The baby, who had been in the car since 8:30 a.m., was pronounced dead at the scene, Beall said.

This is the 20th hot car death this year, according to KidsAndCars.org, a national nonprofit. Texas ranks # 1 in the country for hot car deaths, with a total of 145 deaths since 1991.

A record 54 children died in hot cars in 2018, followed by 53 deaths in 2019, according to KidsAndCars.org. Last year, 25 children died in hot cars, a drop that KidsAndCars.org director Amber Rollins attributed to the pandemic.

Click here for more information on how to protect children from hot cars.