A 1-year-old girl has died after her mother forgot to take her to daycare. The girl died after being left in the car for nearly 10 hours in the Texas sun.
The mother returned to the daycare at 6 p.m. to pick up her children –the 1-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 5-year-old.
She realized then that she had only brought two of her children to the daycare, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office stated.
The mother drove to the Houston daycare around 8:30 a.m. Thursday morning to drop off all her kids, the New York Daily News reported.
It’s unknown how the mother overlooked the 1-year-old in her backseat for so many hours, but authorities are still looking into the matter.
The mother has not been charged.
On Thursday, Houston temperatures ranged from the lower 70s to the mid-90s, with a high of 94 degrees around 1 p.m. The car was parked outside the whole time, and it was a sunny day, Sgt. Ben Beall said during a news conference.
“So that would probably put you in the 120-degree-plus temperature inside the car,” he told reporters.
Apparently, the mother went home and about her day after leaving the daycare. She also went to exercise and at one point switched cars, authorities reported.
Beall added that the mother and a daycare worker found the young child in the car after they rushed to the home to look for her. She was on the floorboard and not in her car seat.
The death could result in charges filed by the sheriff’s office or handed over to a grand jury to determine if a crime was committed, Beall said.
