7 Kids Locked In Hot Car In Maryland; 1 Of Them Calls 911

ST. CHARLES, MD — Seven children locked in a hot car in Maryland called 911 Friday before they met the same fate as dozens of children who died last year of heatstroke after being left in similar circumstances. The children, ranging in age from 2 to 4 years old, were unsure where they were, the 4-year-old boy who called 911 told the dispatcher, but authorities used GPS tracking and other technology to locate the car, parked outside St. Charles Towne Center.

The 37-year-old mother of two of the children, who was babysitting the five others, returned to the car about 10 minutes after police got the call at 1:06 p.m. Friday, according to a news release from the Charles County Sheriff’s Office. She had been shopping at the mall for at least 20 minutes, police said.

The windows of the car were rolled up and the engine wasn’t running.

The outside temperature was around 80 degrees, according to records. The children were “scared and sweaty,” authorities told news station WJLA. They were treated at the scene by Charles County fire and rescue personnel. None of the kids had to be hospitalized.

The driver of the vehicle was charged with confinement of children inside a motor vehicle, and additional charges from the St. Charles State’s Attorney’s Office are pending, the sheriff’s office said. State child-protective officials also are investigating.

The woman’s name was not released “due to the nature of the crime and to protect the victims,” according to the release.

Leaving children under age 8 unattended in a car is against the law in Maryland if the caregiver is out of the sight of the child, unless a reliable caregiver at least 13 years old remains with the child.

“It is also dangerous to leave anyone, including pets, inside a motor vehicle especially as outside temperatures become warmer,” the sheriff’s office said in the release. “ The temperature inside a parked car can quickly rise to extremely high and even fatal levels in a short period of time.”

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.

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 Maryland, 14 children have died in hot cars since 1998, according to the National Safety Council.

Although police don’t think this is the case in the recent Maryland incident, in 55 percent of the 906 pediatric hot car deaths entered in the Kids and Cars national database since 1998, the person responsible for the child's death unknowingly left them in the vehicle. That can happen to even the most loving, caring and protective parents — to a teacher, dentist, social worker, police officer, nurse, pastor, soldier and even a rocket scientist.

David Diamond, a psychology professor at South Florida State University who has researched the fatal errors that lead to hot car deaths for more than a decade, explains that parents who leave their children in hot cars often are operating on “auto-pilot mode” and forget they’re there.

It’s not a matter of absentmindedness or an intent to harm children, Diamond explained in a study published in the March issue of the journal Medicine, Science and the Law. The human brain is a complicated organ with systems that compete against each other. One of those systems is “prospective memory” — for example, for a parent who isn’t accustomed to dropping a child off at daycare to take responsibility for that on the way to work.

When the brain systems compete, even the most well-executed plans can go haywire. In auto-pilot mode, the parent might continue on a route taken very day to work, and without visual or verbal cues to serve as a reminder, like a misplaced diaper bag or a crying child, the chances the parent will lose awareness of the child in the backseat increase.

“The brain memory systems that fail when people forget children in cars are the same as those systems that cause us to forget to shut off the headlights when we arrive at a destination,” Diamond said in a news release. “Just as auto manufacturers have built-in systems that shut off headlights, we must have built-in systems that detect a forgotten child in a car.”

Recommended: Fatal Distraction: Forgetting A Child In The Backseat

Diamond’s study also included research on false memories, in which people create strong memories of events that were implied but did not happen. In the cases he has handled, the brain somehow creates the false memory that the parents had dropped off their children, as planned, at daycare.

They return to their car “with a plan to pick their child up at daycare, only to find the child had suffered from heatstroke during the day,” Diamond said in the news release.

Diamond has worked as an expert witness for defense attorneys for parents who have been criminally charged in their children’s deaths, as well as with legal scholars to address the legal ramifications for parents whose children die in hot cars.

In many cases, he said, research backs up that children were harmed without individual intent or awareness. He argues that should negate criminal prosecution in such cases.

One simple trick to remember the child is in the backseat include placing an employee badge, briefcase or some other item necessary to start the day near the child’s safety seat. More safety tips are found here.

More broadly, Kids and Cars advocates for federal legislation requiring vehicle manufacturers to install technology alerting drivers when they leave their child in the car.

Here’s more about Diamond’s research: