Baby girl dies after mum, 25, ‘leaves her in 43C car for more than two hours’ – Mirror Online
A baby girl in the US died after her mother left her inside a hot car for two and half hours as temperatures inside the vehicle soared to 43C, prosecutors say.
Chaya Shurkin, from Lakewood, New Jersey, has been charged with the death of the child following the incident on May 6.
A panicked neighbour raised the alarm after noticing the one-year-old girl in distress inside the car.
CPR was administered to the unconscious child who was then rushed Monmouth Medical Center, but later died from her injuries.
(Image: CBS2)
Warm weather that day meant that temperatures inside the car would have reached 43 degrees celcius.
The child was left in the vehicle after a mix-up with her parents over who was bringing her in, NBC reported .
Detectives say the toddler’s mother tried to take her to day care but drove home after the youngster refused to go inside.
The neighbour told WCBS-TV : “My wife was leaving for work and she walked out and saw the mother crying and holding the baby in her hands.
“I performed CPR for the first couple of minutes until first responders arrived.”
On Monday, it was announced that 25-year-old Shurkin had been charged with second-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
“A thorough and extensive investigation revealed that the child had been left alone in Shurkin’s motor vehicle for approximately two-and-one-half hours with the car turned off, in the heat,” Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said.
(Image: CBS2)
“The investigation determined that the act of leaving the child in the car unattended for such a long period of time was the cause and manner of the child’s death.”
Shurkin now faces a maximum of up to ten years in jail and could be hit with a $150,000 ( £120,000) fine.
Lakewood Mayor Meir Lichtenstein said that temperatures outside that day were at around 21C – but the interior of the vehicle heated up rapidly.
He said: “It wasn’t all that warm but what happens is sometimes when the sun shines down on a car the inside of the car can… the temperatures can rise and, like I said, that’s probably exactly what law enforcement is trying to ascertain at this time.”