4-month-old boy dies, toddler sister survives after father leaves them in hot car in Texas

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Police say a 4-month-old boy died but his sister survived after their father left them in a hot car for at least 40 minutes in South Texas.

Corpus Christi Police Sgt. Marc Harrod says the father drove home with the children Tuesday afternoon, but entered the family home without them. Harrod says the father remembered the children at least 40 minutes later and summoned help.

The baby died at a Corpus Christi hospital. His 16-month-old sister was treated at the scene and released to relatives.

Police have not released the names.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/09/4-month-old-boy-dies-toddler-sister-survives-after-father-leaves-them-in-hot/

[valerief]

1. Waiting now for the "it's easy to forget your kids" apologists. nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Sadly, it is. Please get down off your high horse and read this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

[valerief]

3. Nah. I don't want to read an apologist's linked article. nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. It won a Pulitzer, but if you don't want to educate yourself

about how the human brain works under stress and distraction, that's up to you. But it's not an apology, it's science.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. science? Shmience!

Don't confuse some here with facts.

[jtuck004]

8. Very passionate people (per Evilhair, the pres candidate) don't need science.

Must be interesting to wake up in the morning and realize one thinks the same way.

[jonno99]

6. I think it was worth reading:

-snip-

"The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.

Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

The facts in each case differ a little, but always there is the terrible moment when the parent realizes what he or she has done, often through a phone call from a spouse or caregiver. This is followed by a frantic sprint to the car. What awaits there is the worst thing in the world."

-snip-

[Kensan]

13. A very thought provoking article..

Thank you for posting that link. I had to shut my office door at work (was getting a little dusty in my eyes). It's quite easy to armchair quarterback this event, and just blame it on bad parenting. The article was very thorough in laying out the sequences of events that distract many of us during the day. Our brains are hard wired to multitask, and go on auto-pilot for the mundane tasks (like the example of realizing you just drove from point A to B and don't recall the turns you made).

Parents are automatically sleep deprived. Add in the stresses of jobs, family & friends, health issues and many other factors and it's not difficult to see how that "swiss cheese" analogy could happen. This is something that could happen to anyone, and as the article points out it doesn't matter about your education, finances or gender. I joke with my wife all the time that if her head weren't attached to her shoulders, she would forget it.

I can't imagine the grief the people in this article have had to endure, and will continue to bear, for the rest of their lives. Lyn sounds like an amazing woman, and I'm sure she has helped several others who would have likely compounded the misery by succumbing to their darkest thoughts.

[Auggie]

7. Cars have seatbelt alarms. Why can't they have kid/pet alarms?

Seems like it would easy to add

[jtuck004]

9. Cheaper to kill the kids and pets. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. The technology exists. The manufacturers are concerned about liability

in case the alarm fails. From the WaPo article:

In 2000, Chris Edwards, Terry Mack and Edward Modlin began to work on just such a product after one of their colleagues, Kevin Shelton, accidentally left his 9-month-old son to die in the parking lot of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The inventors patented a device with weight sensors and a keychain alarm. Based on aerospace technology, it was easy to use; it was relatively cheap, and it worked.

Janette Fennell had high hopes for this product: The dramatic narrative behind it, she felt, and the fact that it came from NASA, created a likelihood of widespread publicity and public acceptance.

That was five years ago. The device still isn’t on the shelves. The inventors could not find a commercial partner willing to manufacture it. One big problem was liability. If you made it, you could face enormous lawsuits if it malfunctioned and a child died. But another big problem was psychological: Marketing studies suggested it wouldn’t sell well.

The problem is this simple: People think this could never happen to them.

[Gormy Cuss]

11. This problem rose after another safety feature was added.

Airbags. Back in the old days it was far more common to keep the baby in a car seat on the passenger side -- really hard to forget they're there. I don't know how easy it would be to solve the airbag issue but I do hope that engineers are working on it.

It wouldn't stop all of these tragedies but it would help.

[Warpy]

14. I have a KIA and can shut the passenger side airbag off

Other cars might have the same feature.

[GOLGO 13]

12. This particular nightmare really messes with my mind.

It's why I wont let anyone except my wife drive the kids around. Fucking nightmare is what this is.

[Dont call me Shirley]

15. Baby boy...

Sister....