Toddler died in blisteringly hot car after dad forgot she was buckled in seat

A tragic three-year-old girl died in a roasting hot car after her dad forgot she was strapped in her carseat in the family driveway.

Little Charlotte Jones was staying off sick the day her father Scott had driven her and her sister to school for the usual drop-off. But, when the dad returned home with his poorly daughter still in the back of their car - he forgot she had not been left at school that morning, reports the Mirror.

Scott logged on to work in his home office at the family's Arizona home as temperatures soared to 98F (36C), and he only realised his precious daughter was still in the car when his wife called to check on them four hours later. In heartbreaking details, mum Angela recalled how her husband's voice dropped on the phone when he started to realise his mistake.

Angela said: "All of a sudden I could just hear a panic in his voice,” Angela Jones told Fox News Digital. "I initially thought she had gotten into the pool or something like that, and then he was like, 'Oh, my God, I don’t think I ever got her out of the car'.

"Then it hit him what has happening and he ran out into the driveway." The dad immediately called 911, but it was too late as it daughter had succumbed to the heat and had died in the car.

Janette Fennell, the founder of Kids and Car Safety, a group that compiles data on child hot car deaths says about 55 per cent of child hot car deaths can be attributed to little ones being unknowingly left in vehicles.

She said while child front car seat deaths have plummeted due to seats being banned in the front passenger seats, child vehicular heatstroke deaths have grown and remaine high. The group has recorded at least 1,083 hot car deaths from 1990 through 2023, with 29 deaths last year and 36 deaths in 2022. The summer months are the most prevalent.

This week two Indiana parents were arrested after they allegedly left their kids inside a SUV amid scorching temperatures. The pair were said to have visited a Walmart store on Monday evening, June 17, to run a few errands.

As they went inside, they allegedly left their children in their car — which quickly started to heat up as they left the air conditioning off, the windows up and the doors locked on the vehicle.

After a few minutes, temperatures inside the vehicle had skyrocketed to around 125 degrees Fahrenheit — a temperature at the lower end of most oven's settings. The children were in the SUV for around 40 minutes, according to the Lawrence Police Department, after which time officers were called to respond to the scene, arriving at around 7:08 p.m. EDT.

A passerby noticed the kids were locked inside the vehicle, which wasn't running, and dialled 911. One of the children was sweating profusely, while the other was dazed, the cops confirmed, but it isn't clear how old they were.

The children were rescued, and both were OK, the authorities revealed. Their parents, Mirianne Pierre and Watson Joseph, were arrested and booked at the Marion County jail on two counts each of neglect of a dependent, or child neglect, in layman's terms — felonies.

The kids were subsequently placed into the custody of the Department of Child Services. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Sgt. Anthony Patterson told local station WXIN, "We never want to leave our kids unattended, much less when it's hot outside. The moment we shut that engine off, the temperatures rise really rapidly."

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