A tragic story out of Deltona, Florida, on Friday afternoon comes with a six-month-old baby being found dead inside of a hot car.
Bay News 9 reports that the baby was left all day inside a car at a Volusia County middle school. The baby was found dead inside of the car on Friday afternoon.
Per the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, the baby was accidentally left in a vehicle by a teacher at Deltona Middle School. The teacher, whose name has not yet been released, was not the parent of the baby but was caring for the child.
At 3:54 p.m., a frantic 911 call came into the sheriff’s office. A school resource officer rushed outside to the vehicle, but the baby had already died by the time the officer was able to make it out there.
WFTV reported that the baby was a young boy.
The school resource officer rushed out to the SUV just three minutes after the 911 call was placed, but it was already too late. The baby boy was left in a car seat in the back of the SUV which was parked in the front parking lot of the school campus on Enterprise Road.
According to NHTSA , it doesn’t take long at all for a vehicle to heat up to extreme temperatures even if it’s cool outside. When temperatures outside are even just 83° F and the window is rolled down only two inches, the temperature inside the car can get to 109° F in a mere 15 minutes.
Most of central Florida was cloudy on Friday afternoon, but temperatures had still gotten up to the mid-80s in some places and low 90s in others.
The Centers for Disease Control state that very high body temperatures can cause damage to the brain and other vital organs or even heat stroke or death. For children, the risk is even higher.
“Children’s bodies have greater surface area to body mass ratio, so they absorb more heat on a hot day (and lose heat more rapidly on a cold day). Further, children have a considerably lower sweating capacity than adults, and so they are less able to dissipate body heat by evaporative sweating and cooling.”
Police are currently investigating the entire situation where the young baby boy was left in a car in Deltona, Florida, and died. As of now, no charges have been filed against the teacher, but that’s not to say that there won’t be as police look into everything that took place.
