According to the Duncanville Police Department, an officer rescued a 1-year-old child from a locked, hot car.
Police say Officer Pinilla responded to a call about a child found alone in a hot vehicle in Duncanville, Texas. The officer was able to break a window on the vehicle away from where the infant was seated and discovered the child crying, sweating profusely, and covered in vomit.
The Duncanville Police Department released video footage of the incident to remind the public not to leave a child alone in a vehicle.
Watch the video below!
“The Duncanville Police Department wants to remind everyone not to leave a child alone in a vehicle. On August 17, 2020 Duncanville Police Officers responded to a call of a child left alone in a vehicle in the 900 Block of Gemini Avenue in Duncanville. The officer arrived and located a Ford Explorer that had a child in a child safety seat located in the back seat behind the drivers’ seat. The officer could hear the child crying and observed the child sweating profusely and covered in vomit. The officer notified dispatch, requested a Duncanville Fire Department medic be dispatched as he attempted to enter the vehicle. The officer was forced to break out the front passenger window to enter the vehicle to retrieve the child. The child was removed from the vehicle and placed inside an airconditioned squad car until the medics arrived on location to evaluate the child. The child was approximately 1 year of age and a guardian of the child was contacted by officers. This is an active and on-going investigation.
The Duncanville Police Department wants to stress to citizens the dangers of the heat inside vehicles. There have been many fatalities of children and pets left in hot vehicles. Research shows why and how fast hot temperatures can heat up even on a mild day. The radiation from the sun is absorbed, the heat goes inside your vehicle and is trapped, which in turn causes the inside temperature to rise. On a sunny 70-degree day, it only takes about a half-hour for the temperature inside a vehicle to reach 104 degrees! If you think that’s fast, after one hour, it can reach 113 degrees. When temperatures outside range from 80 to 100 degrees, the internal temperature of your vehicle can reach a scorching 130 to 172 degrees.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), children dying from heatstroke in a vehicle, either because they were left or became trapped, has increased in recent years. On April 25, we saw the first vehicular heatstroke death of 2020, when a 4-year-old left his home and climbed into a vehicle without his family noticing. His death follows 52 hot vehicle deaths in 2019, and a record 53 deaths in 2018.”
