(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas.) — A Texas mother was taken into custody Tuesday after police alleged her 22-month-old child died when she left the infant in a car outside a Corpus Christi school on one of the hottest days of the year.
The mother, 33-year-old Hilda Ann Adame, was jailed on charges of causing serious bodily injury to a child and child endangerment/abandonment with imminent bodily injury, according to a Corpus Christi Police Department incident report.
It was not clear how long the infant had been in the car before the baby was found unresponsive, according to the incident report.
At least 24 children, ranging from a 10-month-old in Louisiana to an 8-year-old in North Carolina, have died this year across the nation after being left in vehicles during hot weather, according to the nonprofit child advocacy organization Kids and Car Safety.
The latest hot car death, according to police, unfolded around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday outside the Tom Browne Middle School in Corpus Christi as temperatures soared past 100 degrees during a heat advisory issued for the city by the National Weather Service.
The weather service advisory said the heat index, which factors in relative humidity, made it feel like 112 degrees in Corpus Christi on Tuesday.
When officers arrived at the scene in the city’s South Side neighborhood, a school nurse was already performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the infant, according to the incident report.
The baby was taken by ambulance to nearby Driscoll Children’s Hospital, where the child was pronounced dead, police said.
Adame was taken into custody at the scene and questioned by police before being booked at the City Detention Center. Police did not disclose what Adame said in the interview with detectives.
Leanne Libby, spokesperson for the Corpus Christi Independent School District issued a statement, saying, “We want to express our gratitude to those who swiftly responded upon learning of this crisis, including school staff as well as district police and local law enforcement.” Libby said counseling was made available on campus Tuesday afternoon and the district’s crisis counseling team will be onsite on Wednesday.
The child’s death came just two days after a Louisiana mother was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder in the hot-car death of her 10-month-old child, according to the Jennings, LA, Police Department. The mother, Hannah Faith Cormier, 32, of Jennings, was being held Wednesday on a $1 million bond following her arrest on Sunday.
Jennings Police Chief Danny Semmes told reporters Cormier’s baby died a day after Cormier took her to a hospital on Aug. 13. Jennings alleged Cormier left the baby in the car after being called to work.
“Children should never be left in cars, even if it’s not hot out,” Jenette Fennell, president of Kids and Cars Safety, told ABC affiliate station KIII in Corpus Christi. “In the first 10 minutes, the temperature in the vehicle can rise as much as 20 degrees.”
Fennell recommended that people force themselves into the habit of looking through their vehicles before locking them.
“The biggest problem we have is nobody thinks it’s going to happen to them until it happens to them,” Fennell said.
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