Published Tuesday, June 11, 2002
By Richard Lake
The Las Vegas Review-Journal
A 5-year-old boy died Saturday after a relative found him in a car parked in the driveway of his North Las Vegas home, authorities said.
The boy, identified Monday by the Clark County coroner's office as Raymond Spinharney, died at University Medical Center shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday, the hospital reported. "I don't know if he got stuck in the car or if he just fell asleep," said Lt. Art Redcay, a North Las Vegas police spokesman. No one had been arrested as of Monday, and the case remained under investigation. Redcay said a sibling of the boy had been turned over to child protection authorities as a precaution while the investigation continued. The high temperature Saturday was 101 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. The coroner's office did not release Raymond's cause of death because toxicology tests were pending. The tests typically take about three weeks to complete. Redcay said the boy's family reported to investigators that he had been playing Saturday morning outside the family's house in the 2500 block of Taylor Avenue. Taylor is just off Eastern Avenue near Owens Avenue. About 10:30 a.m., the boy came inside the house to get a drink of water, the family told police. He went back outside, and no one saw him for hours. The police spokesman said the boy's cousin, whom he did not identify, found the boy inside the car after a search. "The kids had basically been climbing in and out of the car, playing around it," said Redcay, who added that the car was inoperable and was towed away to let detectives examine it. After Raymond was discovered, someone placed the boy in a bathtub to try to revive him while rescue authorities were summoned. The Police Department received the call at 2:02 p.m., Redcay said. A woman at the house Monday afternoon who identified herself as Maria said the boy's parents were not home, and she declined to comment in detail. Later Monday, a man at the house who identified himself as Christopher Rivera, Raymond's cousin, said he was confused about Saturday morning's sequence of events. He said Raymond was found in the front of the car, not the trunk, and said he was not sure why the boy could not escape the car. "Maybe he fell asleep," Rivera said. He said the adults in the house, including Raymond's mother, Frances Rivera, were asleep at the time of the incident. A baby-sitter who was supposed to be in charge disappeared, he said. "I'm just now trying to figure out what happened," Christopher Rivera said in a telephone interview. He said Raymond's mother was unavailable for comment Monday because she was in a "treatment program." He said he did not know what kind of treatment she was seeking. After Raymond was found in the car, he was taken to the medical center, where doctors pronounced him dead at 2:48 p.m., said hospital spokesman Rick Plummer.Dr. Jay Fisher, a pediatric emergency physician at the center, said he sees examples every year of children dying after exposure to the heat, often in vehicles.
He said that while adults do face health risks from the desert heat, children are especially prone to dehydration because their bodies use much more water each day than adults' bodies do. He said he had seen cases in which children or adults became sick from riding across the desert in a car without air conditioning or attending an outdoor sporting event.Examples of children dying after being inside a vehicle on hot summer days are reported each year. Last year, for example, at least three local children died while inside cars on hot days:
• In early May 2001, a 5-year-old boy who had become trapped in a car trunk died after about a half-hour inside. The boy had climbed into the trunk while playing hide-and-seek in a dirt parking lot at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. • A 9-month-old boy died a few weeks later after being left in a vehicle. Authorities said at the time that two adults, including the child's mother, who were watching several children had become confused about the boy's whereabouts. • About a month later, an infant died after his parents, confused by a schedule change, forgot to drop him off at day care. They had left him in a hot car for several hours before discovering him dead. Fisher, the pediatric physician, said children should never be left alone in a car on a hot day or at any other time.With the dangers of heat exposure, children can be harmed in other ways while inside a car, such as being strangled by a seat belt or becoming entangled in the pedals, he said.
"There's just so many reasons why you shouldn't leave a child in a car," he said. "Just get your mind off that notion. Don't do it. Don't do it at your house. Don't do it at the store. Just don't do it period."