Horrified mother finds her 10-month-old girl dead after baby sitter left her in hot car that reached 133F for ‘at least five hours’, Florida cops say
- Rhonda Jewell, 46, was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child
A horrified mom found her 10-month-old daughter in Florida after her babysitter left her in a hot car that reached 133 degrees Fahrenheit for at least five hours while attending to other children.
The shocking incident unfolded at around 8am on Wednesday when Rhonda Jewell, 46, picked up the infant from the home of the child’s mother in north Macclenny.
Jewell, who had looked after the child on several occasions since June, then drove to another residence in the city where she was babysitting other children.
Upon arriving at the second home, Jewell left the child in the SUV as temperatures outside boiled at 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
Jewell told investigators that she assumed the baby was asleep, so she entered the home and started interacting with the three other children she was babysitting, aiming to pick up the infant later but ‘completely’ forgetting to do so.
Rhonda Jewell, 46, Jewell was charged with aggravated manslaughter after the baby died from being left in a hot vehicle for hours in north Macclenny, Florida
It wasn’t until the child’s mother arrived to pick up her daughter at around 1pm that Jewell realized that the child had been forgotten.
Deputies discovered the child inside the garage lying on the seat of a golf cart and started life-saving measures.
The infant’s skin was ‘very hot to the touch,’ according to responding deputies and and rescue personnel.
The infant was taken to Fraser Memorial Hospital and pronounced deceased.
Jewell was arrested and held at the Baker County Detention Center.
She made her first court appearance on Thursday morning, where her bond was set at $25,000.
Jewell was charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child after being accused of leaving the infant child unattended in a vehicle that was not running ‘while outside temperatures were 98 degrees Fahrenheit with temperatures inside the vehicle reaching over 133 degrees for a period of at least 5 hours’.
Police asked that people respect the privacy of the child’s family.
The Baker County Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook: ‘Each of us are given the gift of life every morning we wake up and every evening when we finish our day, we are blessed if our family is safe and healthy.
‘In the blink of an eye, our world can be turned upside down. Please be mindful of this when trying to understand the tragedy that took place in our small town yesterday.’
This year, 14 children have died of vehicular heatstroke, including five children in Florida, according to noheatstroke.org.
The Macclenny girl is the sixth and youngest child to die in the state this year from extreme temperatures inside a vehicle, noheatstroke.org reports.
Vehicular heatstroke events can start as early as March each year and 53 per cent of hot car deaths are the result of a child being forgotten in a car, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The end of the workweek, Thursdays and Fridays, have the highest death rates, and 46 per cent of the times a child is forgotten, their caregiver had planned to drop them off at a day care or preschool, NHTSA reports.
