Published August 11, 2001
The Jefferson City News Tribune
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) -- A 2-year-old girl remained hospitalized on Friday, a day after being left in a closed car on the last -- and hottest -- day of a deadly two-week heat wave. The girl, who is from Kansas City, Kan., was listed in good condition in the intensive care unit at the University of Kansas Medical Center. A hospital spokesman declined to release her name. Don Pickard, a spokesman for Metropolitan Ambulance Services Trust, said the girl was experiencing serious seizures when medics arrived and had a body temperature of over 104. Police Sgt. Henry Callahan said officers were sent to a home about 5:30 p.m. Thursday and found that the girl had been strapped into a safety seat inside a car. Police said the parents found the girl in the car after they noticed she was missing from the home. Ambulance workers were told the girl was inside the car for about an hour, Pickard said. Police questioned the girl's parents at the hospital on Thursday night. A dispatch official on Friday said no arrests had been reported in the case. The National Weather Service said the official high temperature in Kansas City, Mo., was 96 degrees on Thursday, the hottest day of the city's two-week heat wave. Seven people in the Kansas City area have died of heat-related injuries, most of them 50 or older. Last week, police in Kansas City, Kan., arrested a woman who left her 13-month-old son in a hot car in a motel parking lot. She was charged with child endangerment. The boy was not injured, and an ambulance spokesman said it was unlikely that the child had been in the car long because he did not require medical treatment. A cool front moving through the area Thursday night brought relief from the heat, with rain, overcast skies and highs in the 80s on Friday.