Dallas Girl, 2, Dies After Being Left In Hot Car While Parents Napped
A Dallas girl has died after being left in a hot car, according to the police.
USA Today reports that the authorities in Dallas are investigating a two-year-old girl’s death, after her family allegedly forgot her in their vehicle after returning home from a family outing.
Nariyah Raufu returned home with her parents after taking a trip to Fair Park, according to Child Abuse Unit investigators. After arriving, Raufu’s parents went inside their duplex in the 11900 block of Garden Terrace Drive to take a nap, apparently not realizing that they had left their toddler inside the hot vehicle.
“(The girl’s) parents stated that they believed all children had exited the vehicle when they returned home,” police spokeswoman Senior Cpl. Melinda Gutierrez said in a statement, according to ABC News affiliate WFFA 8.
It wasn’t until Nariyah’s father went outside to work on his vehicle that he found his daughter still strapped in her car seat. He immediately removed the child and took her inside, where her mother started performing CPR in desperate attempts to try and save her daughter.
“He immediately removed the child from the vehicle and took her inside where he called 911 as the mother performed CPR for approximately 30 minutes,” Gutierrez said.
Nariyah’s mother then drove her to the Children’s Medical Center Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m.
Police are still investigating the Dallas girl’s death. However, no charges have currently been filed against the parents, as of Saturday, July 19.
According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Love Field in Dallas reached 98 degrees on Friday afternoon. Kidsandcars.org reported that 32 children died in 2014 after suffering heat strokes while left in a hot vehicle.
Safe Kids Worldwide, an advocacy group, said that Nariyah’s death is the first death related to a child being left in a vehicle to occur in Texas this year.
Vehicles can heat up very quickly, reaching 125 degrees in just minutes, KidsandCars.org reports. 80 percent of the increase in temperature happens within the first 10 minutes of the car being shut off, and cracking the windows does not slow the process down. Because a child’s body temperature can heat three to five times faster than an adult’s, it is very easy for them to suffer a heatstroke.
According to the website, 87 percent of children who have died from a vehicular heatstroke were ages three and under. 54 percent of those deaths were children one year old and younger, believed to be because of the rear-facing infant car seats that look the same with or without a child in them.
[Photo via Shutterstock]
