Family of child who died in hot car in ‘deep pain’
Preliminary autopsy results found child died of hyperthermia
CROSSROADS CHRISTIAN Communications’s flagship show 100 Huntley Street opened Thursday with an emotional call for mourning and prayer after a three-year-old boy died in their Burlington parking lot, pulled from a hot car.
“This was a child whose family is a precious part of the team of our building owner, a family who is in deep pain right now as they mourn the loss of their young son,” said a visibly shaken Cheryl Weber, a host of the show.
Halton police said preliminary results from an autopsy done in Toronto Thursday found the child died of hyperthermia, consistent with the child being left in a hot car for an extended period of time.
Police received a 911 call from an “hysterical” man around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday after the boy’s lifeless body was found in the back of a grey Ford Escape that was parked at Crossroads on North Service Road at Kerns Road.
Despite resuscitative efforts, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Temperatures in Burlington reached a high of 26 C that day, according to Environment Canada.
Police have not said who made the tragic discovery or how long the boy may have been in the car.
The Halton police homicide unit is leading the investigation because of a protocol that mandates all sudden deaths of children under five be investigated by police. No charges have been laid.
“This is an inconceivable tragedy
“This is an inconceivable tragedy and right now we are focusing on the community and healing.” SGT. DANA NICHOLAS
Halton Police
and right now we are focusing on the community and healing,” said Sgt. Dana Nicholas. “Any time a child dies it is devastating to the family, community as a whole and to first responders.”
Building owner Shawn Saulnier of Campbellville, who knows the family involved, struggled to find words as he spoke to the media Thursday morning about the tragic event that occurred outside his building.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Crossroads noted that the building’s new owners “are working closely with authorities while walking with their team through tremendous grief.”
“We continue praying fervently for them and their families, our community, and our staff as we are all affected by this deeply tragic situation,” said Carolyn Innis.
In Canada, there are no national statistics about the number of heatstroke deaths in vehicles, but there are deaths every year.
In the United States, there have been 749 heatstroke deaths of children in vehicles since 1998, according to the website noheatstroke.org. In 54 per cent of those cases, the child was forgotten
by a caregiver. In 27 per cent of cases, the child was playing in an unattended vehicle.
Most of the children were three or younger.
Concerned about the phenomena, Dr. Anthony Crocco, medical director and head of pediatric emergency medicine at McMaster Children’s Hospital, took the “hot car challenge” last summer to raise awareness about how quickly things can go wrong.
He lasted about 15 minutes in the car, never allowing himself to get into that dangerous heatstroke range.
Young children are especially
at risk of heatstroke because they dehydrate faster and cannot get out of the situation on their own, Crocco said.
“There is no safe amount time to leave child in a hot environment,” he said.
The first stage is heat exhaustion, where someone is sweating and agitated, Crocco said.
“The problem is when someone stops sweating ... that can quickly go from heat exhaustion to stroke,” he said.
With heatstroke someone’s core temperature rises so high they become lethargic and the body starts to shut down. Death
can be caused by seizure or organ failure.
In the emergency department, they see kids every year being treated for heat exhaustion and heatstroke, he said, adding that it doesn’t just happen in cars.
The amount of time it takes for a situation to turn deadly can vary significantly depending on the child, temperature and other conditions.
“Every heat exposure death is a tragedy and its usually an accident,” Crocco said.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning article published in the Washington Post in 2009, “Fatal Distraction,” recounted the heartbreaking stories of seemingly ordinary people who had accidentally killed their babies.
“Death by hyperthermia” is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just ... forgets a child is in the car,” the Gene Weingarten story reads.
The Canada Safety Council warns drivers to look twice before locking and always keep cars locked to prevent children from climbing in and becoming trapped.
“It may come as a surprise that more than half of the children left in hot cars were trapped there unintentionally, forgotten in a moment of absent-mindedness, or trapped after playing unsupervised in an unlocked vehicle,” the hot car warning reads.
The safety agency also suggests placing your cellphone, purse or wallet in the back seat, “a strategy that requires you to turn around and check the back seat whenever you leave the vehicle.”