While the summer season is slowly creeping away in certain parts of Asia, in the western world it’s just begun. And in the more arid parts of the United States, the heat is just unthinkable.
But this didn’t stop one father from accidentally leaving in his six-month-old daughter in hot car.
According to a Straits Times report, Texan Michael Thedford had just arrived home after dropping off his two other children to the daycare.
However, in his haste go get back inside the house, he forgot that his daughter was in the car as well, and slept for four hours.
That day the temperatures reached 35 degrees Celsius.
“At 1pm, Thedford woke up and realised his daughter was in the car. Panicking, he ran to the front yard, according to the warrant,” the Straits Times report said.
“When he reached the van and flung open the door, he found his daughter ‘stiff’ as a board and ‘hot as a brick.’ She was unresponsive as he carried her little body into the house.”
Then, in an effort to revive her daughter, he did the unthinkable and placed her in the fridge and left her there for “an undetermined length of time.”
He then pulled her body out and attempted a CPR. When he failed, he called his wife and the authorities.
Michael Thedford was charged with manslaughter, which surprised his neighbors and friends, having described him as deeply loving his children and a great father.
Next page find out about the danger of leaving children in cars
The dangers of children left in cars
In a WebMD article, director of paediatric emergency medicine at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia Dr. Christopher Haines, said that many parents are unaware how quickly an innocuous errand can turn deadly.
“On a day that is just 72 deg F, the temperature (inside a car) can increase by 30 to 40 degrees in an hour, and 70 per cent of this increase occurs the first 30 minutes,” he said.
Not only that, according to Seattle Children’s Hospital, children’s bodies heat up three to five times faster than an adults’. Furthermore, cooling down in the refrigerator is not the way to go.
