As summer continues to quickly approach, the heat is only going to get more brutal, and with that comes the reality that the inside of a car can get dangerously hot. Sadly, a Texas family is finding that lesson out the hard way, after the bodies of a young brother and sister were found inside a car on a 96-degree day.
Two-year-old Juliet Ramirez and her 16-month-old brother Cavanaugh were found in a vehicle outside of their home on Friday. Their mother found them after she says they “disappeared” from a back room of their family home.
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Captain Mark Arnett, from the Parker County Sheriffs Department, told reporters that the mother alleges that when she realized the children were gone she went looking for them and found them locked inside the car with her keys and cell phone.
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He also said she told police that she smashed out the window to get to them.
Right now, authorities are trying to figure out how the children came to allegedly lock themselves inside the car.
“I think that’s the biggest question we’re asking, and I think that’s the answer that we’re trying to find is how would these children be able to do that,” said Captain Arnett.
A relative of the children, Raymond Ramirez, spoke out on behalf of the family and said, “Everybody’s distraught, it’s just horrible. Being so young, you don’t have any words.”
Including the young Ramirez children, already eight children have died across the U.S. in 2017 after being left inside hot vehicles. At least 3 of those deaths have been in North Texas.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the reason it’s so much easier for children to die of heat stroke in a hot car is that, compared with adults, they are less able to regulate their body temperature.
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[H/T: People]
