August 2004: Edward Hynes
drove to his Inverness carpet-cleaning company, parked, and
went inside, forgetting his daughter, McKenzie, in his car.
The infant, whose body temperature registered 106 degrees,
died.
July 2004: Dennis Francisco Sierra, a Boca Raton
dentist, was charged with aggravated manslaughter in the death
of his 3-year-old son, Andres, after leaving him in his SUV
for three hours. Andres' body temperature: 108 degrees.
June
1987: Amy Brunjes accidentally locks 6-month-old Danny
in her new Nissan Maxima, where he remained for the longest 15
minutes of her life. To this day, she has not forgotten the
intense panic, the "What If?" and the "How Could I?"
With the recent deaths of children left unattended in hot
cars by stressed-out, spaced-out or at the very least,
down-and-out parents, I am painfully reminded of that brutally
hot summer afternoon 17 years ago when I hit the power-lock
button and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach.
I was about to attend a wedding shower for my best friend
from college and I drove the hour-long trip from Hollywood,
Fla., to the island of Palm Beach. I was eager to show off my
new baby and my new wheels. Parking at my destination, I
looked behind me to check on Danny, strapped in his car seat
in the back seat, passenger side. He had just awoken from a
long nap, all smiles and spit.
In moves ingrained by habit, from six months of
"have-baby-will-travel," I popped the trunk to retrieve my
stroller, put my keys in my purse on the passenger seat and
exited the car, hitting the lock button as I shut the door.
The old wheels did not have power locks (this was 1987) and so
locking one door had never before meant locking them all.
I opened the stroller, wheeled it over to Danny's side of
the car and reached to open the back door closest to his seat.
In that split second, I remembered the click of the power
locks and I realized that Danny was trapped in a car with no
air conditioning on a day where you could fry eggs on the
sidewalk.
It was I who had to remember to breathe.
I screamed to someone walking into my friend's house that
my baby was locked in the car and to call the police. Within 5
minutes, the patrol cars screamed up, ambulance in tow. By
this time, I had fetched an umbrella from my wide-open trunk
and was seconds away from smashing it through my car window.
Instead, I made funny faces at Danny while the police pried
a slim-Jim into the doors of my new wheels -- the wheels with
the modern power locks that sank all the way into the siding,
making an easy pop-up out of reach for police.
"How long can he breathe in there?" I asked over and over.
I remember the tall, husky cop wearing dark sunglasses and
black boots up to his knees.
"Don't worry, lady," he said, almost too casually for my
state of mind. "If he starts to turn red, I'll put this boot
through the window."
Danny was bright red and I was nearly delirious. When the
lock finally opened, a paramedic shoved me aside, cut the
car-seat strap with a knife and put an oxygen mask over the
mouth of my sweaty, crying baby. My knees buckled and I sobbed
in relief.
After a cursory check in the ambulance, and a bottle full
of some sort of baby Gatorade provided by the paramedic, Danny
was good-to-go. I remember nothing about the shower.
Since then, while raising three boys, I've overcome worse
fears and tears and by-the-grace-of-God-my-kids-are-alive
experiences. I've gone on with my career, adding more
pressures and responsibilities and things to think about as I
have aged. There are those particularly harried days when I
have to remind myself to breathe and to call my kids to be
sure they got safely from here to there. Sometimes, I am late
in calling -- because the responsibilities of the day zoom to
the front of my mind.
So I can almost relate to the parents who forget their kids
in the car -- almost. I can almost see how it can
happen. I particularly felt this way when I read in October
2003 about the sleep-deprived Wisconsin mother, an editor, who
forgot to drop her 6-month old daughter at day care on her way
to work and left her in the car for more than eight hours. Or
the hospital administrator who, that same year, was so
overwhelmed by the responsibilities of her new high-paying,
high-powered job that she did the same.
Neither were charged in their children's deaths, but I'm
sure they have been living a death sentence ever since.
Those of us more-fortunate parents can only imagine. And
that should be enough.
After Danny was rescued from my car 17 years ago, I vowed
to be as careful and as caring about his needs and safety as
was humanly possible. I've taken that vow a thousand times
since then, warring daily against today's fast-paced,
high-pressured society. There are those -- my kids among them
-- who chide me for being over-protective, too cautious.
Let these tragic events of recent months, and all the other
like tragedies before them, serve as all-consuming reminders
-- as parents, our greatest job lies first and foremost in the
safety and well-being of our children.
- amy.brunjes@scripps.com
Prevention tips
Janette Fennell, the founder and president of the Kansas
City, Kan.-based child-safety group Kids and Cars, offers
these tips to ensure young children aren't accidentally left
in a car:
• Keep a teddy bear in the child's car seat. Every
time parents put children in the car, they move the teddy bear
from the child seat to the front passenger seat. The idea is
to have the teddy bear where the parent can see it and
remember that it means a child is in the car seat.
• Place a cell phone or briefcase on or near the child
seat. That way, parents get in the habit of checking the
child seat before leaving the car.
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