Heat wave in Florida: a 10-month-old baby dies after being forgotten for more than five hours in the car

A 10-month-old baby has died of hyperthermia (as a result of a heat wave) after having been forgotten by her nanny for at least five hours inside a car parked in a garage in the city of Macclenny (in northeast Florida), local media reported Thursday.

The nanny, Rhonda Jewell, 46, was arrested and appeared Thursday before a judge who charged her with “aggravated homicide of a minor.”. For this reason, a bail of $ 25,000 has been imposed and ordered that she remain under surveillance by a GPS system.

Jewell drove to the baby's home Wednesday morning to pick her up and then drove to another house in the same town, where she also had the task of caring for other minors. He parked in the garage and started talking to the other kids to the point that he “completely forgot he left the baby in the car,” according to News 4 Jax.

When the girl's mother arrived at 1:00 p.m. local time (5:00 p.m. GMT) to pick her up, the baby was still strapped to her car seat in the back seat of the car. Urgently transferred by paramedics to Fraser Memorial Hospital, the doctors could not do anything to save her life.

heat wave in florida

Florida is on alert for an extreme heat wave with temperatures above 43.3ºC in parts of the south of the state. This July, an 18-month-old baby also died of hyperthermia after spending some eight hours forgotten inside a car parked outdoors in the city of Lakeland.

His parents were arrested and charged with “aggravated manslaughter of a minor.” The internal body temperature of the baby reached 40ºC and the autopsy carried out determined that the girl died of hyperthermia.

Leaving a child in a vehicle is a very high-risk situation that in the United States alone has left 954 dead from heat stroke (hyperthermia) from 1998 to the present, according to data from the No Heat Stroke organization. So far this year there have been 14 deaths of children for this reason in the United States (including the Macclenny girl), while in 2022 a total of 33 deaths were reported.

Florida authorities have reminded the population of the importance of “taking safety measures” against this wave of heat and high humidity, hydrating properly and keeping in mind that “it is never safe to leave children or pets alone in a parked car.”