Child dies after being left in
vehicle for 3 hours
By Lindsey Stockton, staff writer
A bad decision led to tragedy Wednesday
when a two-year-old girl was left in a car for three
hours.
Southwest Ambulance was called to the parking
lot of the Windsong building at 4:15 p.m. in reference to a
child who was not breathing. The 911-caller suggested that
heat exhaustion was the cause. Ambulance personnel attempted
to resuscitate the child with CPR and transported her to Mt.
Graham Regional Medical Hospital, where she was pronounced
dead.
Safford Police officers were notified,
and they responded to the Windsong building and
hospital.
According to a news release from Safford
Police Department, the preliminary investigation revealed that
the child was left unattended in the vehicle for approximately
three hours with no ventilation. At the time of the incident
the child was in the care of her grandmother. Names are being
withheld until the parents are notified.
The incident
is still under investigation.
In a similar case,
Thatcher Police officers were called to the Wal-Mart parking
lot at 8:45 a.m. on Thursday in reference to a child who was
left in a maroon-colored Ford Expedition.
Thatcher Police officer Shaffen Woods
responded to the scene, where he found two Wal-Mart employees
next to the unattended vehicle. Inside the SUV was a
17-month-old boy strapped in his car seat. Woods opened the
driver's side door, which was unlocked, removed the boy from
the vehicle and placed him in the air-conditioned patrol
car.
Woods reported that the boy was not crying, but he
was sweating and warm to the touch. He called an ambulance to
check the child's health.
Woods ran the vehicle license
plate to identify the owner, Karen Fox, who was paged inside
Wal-Mart. She came out of the store pushing a shopping cart
and ran toward the vehicle when she saw Woods.
Fox told
officers that she had been in the store about 30 minutes and
had forgotten she had the baby with her. The Wal-Mart
employees told Woods they had been with the vehicle for about
15 minutes prior to his arrival.
Fox's five other
children were at home with a babysitter.
Fox was
released with her baby, whose temperature was 98.3 degrees. He
was not transported to the hospital because paramedics said he
looked okay.
Woods sent the report to the Graham County
Attorney's office and filed an incident report with Child
Protective Services.
Woods gained access to Wal-Mart's
security cameras to determine the amount of time Fox was in
the store, but the time stamp on the camera was not
working.
Woods also said he contacted the University of
Arizona, which reported the temperature to be 88 degrees at
8:30 a.m. and 90 degrees at 9 a.m.
On June 22, a
two-month-old boy was found in a car outside Aaron's Furniture
Store in the Safeway shopping center.
Daniel S. Rowan
II called 911 to report the incident after he parked next to
the vehicle containing the child. Rowan told Thatcher Police
officer Lee Thomas that he heard the baby crying and found him
in a vehicle with its windows rolled down but the engine
turned off. After waiting for a minute to see if somebody was
coming for the child, Rowan removed the baby from the vehicle,
put him into his own and turned on the air conditioning. He
told Thomas that the child was covered in sweat when he picked
him up.
The baby's father, Shawn Jean Pierre Lietar,
told police officers he brought his roommate, Annalisa
Aguinaga, and her children to Aaron's. He was sitting in the
car until one of Aguinaga's children came out of the store to
ask him a question. At that time he went into the store,
leaving the child in the car.
According to videotapes
from the store's security cameras, Lietar entered the store at
4:14 p.m. According to Aaron's employee Faroog Bhatti, one of
Aguinaga's children asked Lietar if the baby was still in the
car. At that point, the film shows Lietar running from the
store at about 4:46 p.m.
Aguinaga told police that
Lietar was playing computer games while inside
Aaron's.
Lietar told police that he was on medications
and that the entire incident was a blur. Lietar said the baby
was being so quiet that he didn't remember his son was in the
car.
After the incident, officers contacted the
University of Arizona and learned that while the baby was left
in the car, the outside temperature was 103
degrees.
The baby was transported to Mt. Graham
Regional Medical Center, where it was determined that he
sustained no injuries or distress as a result of being left in
the car. He was treated and released into the custody of
Sharon Lietar, the baby's grandmother.
Contact Lindsey
Stockton at 428-2560 (ext. 240) or e-mail her at lindsey@eacourier.com.
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