A 1-year-old child died after being left in a car parked outside of a hospital for nine hours in Washington state last week, police said.
The child’s foster mother arrived at the hospital for work around 8 a.m. Wednesday and forgot the child inside the car, not realizing it until she returned just after 5 p.m., according to Puyallup Police Department public information officer Don Bourbon.
The child was rushed inside the hospital, but couldn’t be revived, Bourbon said.
The temperature that day in Puyallup, which sits southeast of Tacoma, was between 70 and 75 degrees, but the internal temperature of the car when the child was found was around 110 degrees, police said.
The foster mother and family are cooperating with the investigation and no charges have been filed, police said.
The incident marks the fourth pediatric vehicular heatstroke death this year, according to noheatstroke.org, which said an average of 38 children under the age of 15 die in hot cars in the US every year, most during the summer months.
In 2018 and 2019, a record 53 children died each year from being left in a hot car, according to the National Safety Council.
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