This week’s death of a Monterey infant serves as a reminder of how dangerous leaving children unattended in parked vehicles can be.
McMinnville Detective Sergeant Katelyn Neal said children should never be left alone and unsupervised in a parked car. Neal said parents can get distracted, or underestimate the amount of time they will be gone, and it can only take minutes for a situation to turn life-threatening.
“A lot of people, they leave them there thinking it’s only going to be just a minute or two and they get hung up in the line or they get hung up doing something else,” Neal said. “And before you realize that it’s been 20, 25 minutes and that is way more than enough time for the child to lose consciousness or even die in that time period.”
Neal said even if a child is rescued and revived from a hot car, they can still suffer serious, long-term consequences from heatstroke. Neal said parents can face jail time for their actions.
“You should never leave your kids in the car for any length of time, especially if the car is off, and it’s always just a (good) practice just to take them in and to prevent anything like this from happening,” Neal said.
Neal said unless they are teenagers, parents should not even leave the children in the car with it running, because of the risk of a small child being trapped in the car seat. As the weather gets warmer, Neal said parents can underestimate how hot it can really get.
“Especially when we start now, we’re nearing, you know, summertime, where the temperatures are going to rise up into the high 90s, low hundreds, and it may be 100 outside, but it’s going to be double that in the car,” Neal said.
Moreover, leaving the keys in the car adds additional security risks. Neal said the best things parents can do is hire a babysitter or an additional caregiver and leave their kids at home if they can not bring them inside the destination.
“The risk you take with these is that, you know, if you leave your child in the car and something happens to them, I mean, there’s criminal charges that come after that, and they could face many, many years in prison if something happens to that child while they’re in the car,” Neal said.
