TWIN INFANTS DIE IN HOT CAR.

15-month-old girls left alone in hot car

•A father was charged with manslaughter Friday in the deaths of his 15-month-old twin girls, who were left in a hot car in their west Georgia town, police said.

Witnesses heard screams and saw Asa North running from the parking lot in front of his home, carrying the toddlers to an inflatable kiddie pool out back. He and his neighbours tried to revive them with water and ice packs, but they were too far gone.

Outside temperatures were above 32 C shortly before police were called at about 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

North, 24, is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless conduct, Carroll County jail records show.

“I think possibly alcohol was a factor in some of his decisions that day, and maybe played a factor in this,” said Carrollton police Capt. Chris Dobbs, who identified the girls as Ariel and Alaynah North.

A man with North had been drinking heavily, and “we believe the father had been drinking that day also,” Dobbs said, adding that police tested North’s bloodalcohol level and were awaiting results.

The girl’s mother was at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta at the time, visiting her sister, who had been in a serious car crash Wednesday, Dobbs said.

“I guess he forgot about the kids and left them in the car,” said Donnie Holland, the twins’ uncle. “He should have took care of them kids better than that, what he did. He should have never been in the house asleep. He should have got the kids out of the car the time he got out of the car, you know.”

It wasn’t immediately clear who discovered that the twins were unresponsive in their child seats in the back of the sport utility vehicle.

“The neighbours heard some screaming — I guess coming from the father — and saw him running around back with the two children,” Dobbs said.

Arriving officers performed CPR after finding people trying to cool the girls off in the baby pool.

The twins were pronounced dead at a hospital. Autopsies were being done at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab, GBI spokesman Scott Dutton said Friday morning.

The girls are the 25th and 26th children to die this year in hot vehicles, more than double the number by this point last summer, said Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsAndCars. org, a group that tracks such deaths each year in the U.S.