Man charged after child rescued from hot car

A 53-year-old Hamilton man has been charged with leaving a child unattended after a seven-yearold boy was found in a hot car in a parking lot over the weekend.

Hamilton police were called to the Walmart on Upper James Street, near Fennell Avenue East, around 6 p.m. on Saturday after a couple in the parking lot spotted the boy alone inside a car with its alarm sounding.

The woman coached the boy how to open the door and he was treated and cleared by Hamilton EMS at the scene, police said.

Monique Mead said she is grateful she was in the right place at the right time.

She and her boyfriend pulled into the lot around 5:40 p.m. and noticed the car parked diagonal to them had its alarm going off.

“When I looked over at the car I saw a child ... freaking out, jumping around the car,” she said in Facebook message.

They asked the boy if he was OK, and he said he wasn’t, Mead said, adding that he was “soaking wet head to toe in sweat.”

While her boyfriend went to get tools to smash the window, she said she coached the boy to unlock the door.

When the doors opened the boy was “really scared,” she said.

They called 911 around 5:52 p.m. and around 6:05 p.m. she said a man came out of the Walmart and told them the boy had wanted a Pepsi, but didn’t want to come into the store. The man said the boy was his friend’s child.

“No matter how long you think you’ll be in the store don’t ever leave your kids or someone else’s kids in a hot car,” Mead said.

The incident came just three days after a three-year-old boy died in Burlington after being pulled from a hot car in a parking lot on North Service Road.