Baby Left In Florida Daycare Van Dies: Sheriff

JACKSONVILLE, FL — A daycare employee is facing charges after the death of an infant who was left in a van for four-and-a-half hours in Florida on Wednesday when temperatures were forecast to touch 90 degrees, officials in Jacksonville said.

Officers responded to the Ewing's Love & Hope Preschool & Academy in Jacksonville around 1:08 p.m. on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office told reporters, according to a live broadcast of the briefing.

Officers arrived and assisted firefighters with an unconscious infant in a car seat who was not breathing. The spokesperson said first responders made efforts to resuscitate the baby and then immediately transported her to the hospital. The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital and the spokesperson said the death appears to be heat-related.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said Darryl Ewing, 56, the driver of the daycare van, was booked into jail for child neglect. Ewing is also a co-owner of the daycare.

The sheriff's office said that their investigation found that the baby and other children were picked up for daycare in a van owned by the facility. Ewing was the only driver and no other employees were on the van, the sheriff's office said.

The van arrived at the daycare at around 8:25 a.m. Officials said the baby was left in the third row of the van still strapped in her car seat.

Officials said the baby's mother called the daycare at 1:03 p.m. when it was discovered that the child was never checked in. According to the sheriff's office, the driver is responsible for maintaining a log documenting all the children placed into the van.

The log showed that the driver had checked in two of the baby's siblings but not the 4-month-old baby herself, the sheriff's office said. Other employees interviewed by detectives said it's the driver's responsibility to make sure all children are taken off the van, the sheriff's office said.

The high in Jacksonville was 90 degrees on Wednesday. Kids and Cars, a safety advocacy group, says the "greenhouse effect" can cause the inside of cars to heat up to dangerous temperatures within 10 minutes. Children have died in cars even when the outside is as low as 60 degrees, the group said.

The baby's death marks the eighth hot car death of 2019, according to noheatstroke.org.

Last year, a record 52 children died of vehicular heatstroke after they were left in hot cars, according to data compiled by the National Safety Council.The previous single-year high for pediatric heatstroke was 49, set in 2010. On average, 38 children die in hot cars every year, and so far this year, seven children died of vehicular heatstroke, according to Kids and Cars.

In Florida, 90 children have died in hot cars since 1998, according to the National Safety Council.

Beth Dalbey contributed to this story.