A one-year-old boy was found dead in a hot car where he spent the entire day Wednesday after his father forgot to drop him off at daycare.
The toddler was dead in the backseat of the car when the father finally realized that he had left him there for several hours.
“The father had the child in the morning and – it was not part of their routine – took the child to an appointment with him,” St. Petersburg Police Spokesperson Yolanda Fernandez said.
The father thought he had dropped the child off at the daycare and returned home to work. At around 5 p.m., he headed back to the daycare to pick up the child.
“The father went in to try to pick the child up, but the daycare said, ‘You never dropped him off.’ So at that point, then the father kind of realized what was going on and went back out to the car.”
The man found the child unresponsive in the backseat and called the police. The baby was pronounced dead at the scene.
“In just ten minutes, it can become 20 degrees hotter inside a vehicle with the doors closed,” SPFD Chief of Rescue Lindsay Judah said.
Temperatures in St. Petersburg reached 91 degrees on Wednesday, about 10 degrees hotter than a typical early November day.
