Woman hopes death of mother, 69, during heat wave raises awareness

The daughter of a 69-year-old Henderson woman who died during the recent heat wave hopes her death will raise awareness about the need to check on those who are most at-risk when the weather turns potentially deadly.

Sandra Deanes was found unresponsive in her apartment June 19 after her daughter, Taron Walker, asked her cousin and Henderson police to check on her. Walker said she was preparing to leave the country on a trip when she called her mother and got no response over several hours.

Walker flew to Las Vegas the next morning to find the air conditioner broken in her mother’s apartment. She said the temperature reached as high as 140 degrees at the hottest part of the day.

“It got so hot, her body couldn’t cool itself down,” she said.

The Clark County coroner’s office ruled Deanes’ death an accident caused by hypertensive cardiovascular disease due to environmental heat stress.

Walker said she hopes her mother’s death will remind others to check in on loved ones. She also argued that city government and apartment complexes need to take responsibility for their residents’ safety.

“I don’t accept that the complex doesn’t check on their residents,” she said. “My mother shouldn’t have died from this at all.”

A spokesman for Madrona Ridge Residential said property management didn’t know the air conditioning wasn’t working.

“We are gathering the details of this event,” spokesman Mike Voorhees said Monday. “However, we have confirmed that the last work order submitted by the resident was in March of this year and was not A/c-related.”

Contact Isabelle Delgado at idelgado@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @izzydd_ on Twitter. Review-journal writer Bianca Cseke contributed to this report.