From car seats to coffins

Another summer is upon us, and once again I am writing (rewriting) this editorial, which I first published in 2010. Do we never learn?!

Thankfully, the child left in a hot car in Wellington survived. She will not be added to the statistics in this article. For that, I am grateful. However, I fear that with two more months of oppressive heat in front of us, I will be shedding more tears as I rewrite this editorial once again.

From Car Seats to Coffins

For ten years in a row I have written a variation on this editorial and each year my blood boils and my heart breaks. In August 2010, every newspaper in the state carried the sad story of two-year-old Haile Brockington’s death when a school bus driver to whom she has been entrusted failed to make an obligatory check of the vehicle after all the children had exited. Haile was still strapped in her seat five hours later when the driver returned.

On September 25, 2012 six-month-old Rosalyn Ramos died after being accidentally left for nine hours in her father’s car. The father, who was not usually responsible for taking his daughter to daycare, had forgotten she was in the vehicle and drove to work after dropping his five-year-old son off at his Miami school.

In November 2012, Heather Lynn Jensen, 24, was arrested in Fort Myers, Florida in connection with the deaths of her sons, two-year-old William and four-year-old Tyler, in Mesa, Colorado. According to the report, Jensen was allegedly having sex in another vehicle and left the boys unattended for 90 minutes. She had set the heat to its maximum level and turned off the fan. A test of the car’s heating system with the windows rolled up showed that the temperature inside the vehicle had reached 136 degrees within one hour.

Eleven-month-old Bryan Osceola died on May 15, 2013 after his mother left him sealed inside her vehicle while she went inside her Miami house to sleep. Her pocketbook and a can of beer were found on the seat beside her son.

In April 2014, a Jonesboro, Georgia, day care owner and her daughter were convicted on misdemeanor charges of reckless conduct in the death of a two-year-old Jazmin Green, who had been left in the school van for three hours after she and other children returned from a class trip.

On June 18, 2017, 22-month-old Cooper Harris died after his father, Justin Ross Harris, left him in a locked vehicle for seven hours while he went to work at a Cobb County, Georgia, Home Depot. Harris was supposed to have dropped his son off at daycare earlier in the day.

Summer is upon us once again. So far this year, nine children have died of heatstroke while locked in vehicles. Last year, 40 deaths were reported. According to statistics, in 2018 the total number of children who died from hyperthermia after being left in a vehicle was 53. From 1998 to the present, 705 children have died in the United States with only Texas surpassing Florida in the number of deaths.

It boggles the mind to think that any adult could forget a child, yet, according to the SFSU survey, that is exactly the reason given in 52% of reported deaths -- “I forgot!” Of the remaining deaths, 30 percent were due to children playing unattended in the car. Seventeen percent of the children were intentionally left in the vehicle by an adult. The reason for the remaining one percent was unknown.

At the time of Haile’s death, the Associated Press published an article entitled, Record number of children die in hot vehicles in 2010. The article generated many comments from readers who referenced similar incidents that had been in the news. Some readers made excuses for the parents, grandparents and assorted adults who had been negligent in protecting the innocents in their charge. Thinking back over those excuses, I am as angry today as I was when the article first appeared.

There are no viable reasons for forgetting a child – not in a car, a bus, a playground, a bathroom – nowhere, ever! More than one parent blamed a “change of routine” for causing their lapse of memory. One father was in a hurry to get to work. A soon-to-be bride, preoccupied with second wedding plans, was late for a manicure appointment.

As the mother of two grown children and the grandmother of a precious one-year-old grandson, I can tell you there is nothing “routine” about parenting and childcare. Expect the unexpected should be every mother’s and father’s motto.

Beginning in 1998, when statistics were first recorded, the national average for car deaths remained steady at about 37. In 2009, the number actually declined slightly. Then something changed. According to Kids and Cars, a Kansas based organization which tracks car deaths, 48 children died of hyperthermia in 2010. Some researchers blame the Federal government mandate (1998) which required all manufacturers to install driver and passenger airbags. The air bags made it necessary for children to be placed in the back seat. Most child restraint seats are installed so that the baby faces away from the driver.

As a Florida resident, it saddens me that my state ranks second in the nation in the number of hyperthermia deaths reported. Entering my car on a summer day, I often feel that I am stepping into an oven. When I think of the children who have died while locked inside a vehicle for hours, I am horrified.

People, not just parents, have become distracted by the struggle to survive. The slackened economy, with its threat of job and housing loses, is like the Sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s head. We go through our days lost in a fog of worry and fear. However, there are degrees of fear, and it is time that we began fearing the loss of what is most important – the lives of our children.