(UnitedVoice.com) – Thirty-three children died in 2022 after being left in a hot vehicle. Sadly, 2023 has already seen at least half a dozen of these preventable accidents. Two of those deaths took place at the end of May.
On Wednesday, May 24, the foster mother of a 1-year-old pulled up to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup, Washington, to begin her shift as a social worker. She went inside the hospital and worked for nine hours. When she came outside later that day, she found the child in the car and rushed the baby inside the hospital. Sadly, life-saving measures didn’t save the child.
According to reports, the weather was in the mid-70s on the day of the incident. However, the temperature inside the car was more than 100 degrees. The woman and her husband were caring for another foster child as well, but social services took custody of the kid.
Puyallup Police Department Captain Don Bourbon said the woman was cooperating with law enforcement but said she was “very distraught.”
Another tragic hot car death took place across the country in Florida. On Sunday, May 28, the parents of an 11-month-old girl left her in a vehicle while they went inside of a Palm Bay church.
A statement from the Palm Bay Police Department said law enforcement responded to a call about an unresponsive child in a car. The baby had been in there for about three hours before rescue workers got to her. They rushed her to the hospital, but she was later pronounced dead.
Police Chief Mario Augello said the incident was “unfortunate” and sent the department’s “condolences and prayers out to the family.”
In 2017, Dr. David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, researched the science behind the “Forgotten Baby Syndrome” phenomenon. What he discovered is that “competing factors in the brain come into play.” The basal ganglia is the part of the brain people use to get from one point to another; it often allows them to go on autopilot. That part of the brain suppresses the hippocampus, which devises strategies.
The professor explained that a pattern emerged while studying the cases of hot car deaths. Their brains went on autopilot while their child was being quiet in the car. They thought they took the child to daycare but didn’t. Then, NBC News reported something scary: Any person is capable of “forgetting a child” when the circumstances have changed.
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