A Minnesota mom is behind bars for causing the death of her 1-year-old daughter in November after she left the toddler alone in a car with the heater on, police said.
Nikki Jean Potvin, 29, was busted in Wisconsin on drug charges but is now facing murder and manslaughter counts for leaving her baby in a heated and running car last fall.
Court records revealed that Potvin left the toddler alone and went to sleep in a camper. Temperatures outside the car reached 40s so she left the heat on before stepping out.
Hours later, a man came and asked Potvin to use her car to which she agreed but informed him that her baby was still sleeping there.
The man rushed to the SUV to find a lifeless child with “blood on her nose. He believed the child was deceased at that time,” the criminal complaint stated.
Autopsy results showed that the baby girl died from “hyperthermia due to exposure to heat.”
The report added that the tot’s body had a “protuberant abdomen and skin slippage of the right side of the face.”
Potvin is awaiting extradition to Minnesota to face the murder charges. She is currently being held on drug possession and drug paraphernalia charged in the Chippewa County Jail.