A woman accidentally locked her infant child in a hot car. When she called 911, the dispatcher refused to help.
Lacey Guyton was visiting her grandparents in Waterford, Michigan, on the afternoon of August 18, showing them her two-month-old daughter Raina. When she was leaving, Guyton put Raina in her car seat and closed three passenger-side door. The car’s keys were inside the car, in the child’s diaper bag..
Apparently the car was programmed to secure its doors when the keys were in the car, because as Guyton stood there horrified, the doors all locked, leaving the two-month-old trapped inside.
Realizing her baby was in extreme danger, locked in the hot car on a hot August day, Guyton grabbed a chunk of asphalt and tried to smash one of the windows. Meanwhile Guyon’s grandmother, Mary Riley, dialed 911.
The response she got was shocking.
The 911 dispatcher informed Riley that she would not send police or fire units to break into the car. The trapped child was on her own.
“I was so, like, shocked,” Guyton told Fox News. “Okay they’re not coming. I have to get her out of here. Nobody’s coming.”
‘We Don’t Unlock Cars’
The 911 dispatcher wasn’t being cruel—she was stating Waterford Township policy.
“We don’t unlock cars unfortunately,” Waterford Police Chief Scott Underwood told Fox.
The 911 dispatcher told Riley to call a tow company.
However this wasn’t just a person who had locked her keys in a car. This was a hot car, getting hotter—with an infant trapped inside.
“I’m like, grandma, we don’t have time to call a tow company,” Guyton said. “Like, I don’t know how many minutes I have, until she’s passing out.”
Guyton called 911 herself, trying to explain her emergency.
The dispatcher told Guyton, “I could send a wrecker service, they will charge you, but the fire department doesn’t come out for that.”
Screaming Baby in a Steaming-Hot Car
While she was on the phone with 911, Guyton kept looking through the car window at her trapped child.
Raina was in obvious distress.
“I keep checking on her—she’s screaming at this point—making herself even more hot,” Guyton said.
The 911 dispatcher still wouldn’t act.
“And she again tells me we have to call a tow company, they don’t come out for that—and then she transferred me to a tow company,” Guyton stated.
Finally, Guyton found a tool with which to break a window. She smashed the glass and grabbed her suffering daughter.
“She was really sweaty, screaming, and just drenched in sweat,” Guyton said. “She was probably in there like 10 minutes, so we immediately got her out, got her inside, cooled her down.”
Life-and-Death Situation
Guyton’s actions potentially saved her child. An infant trapped in a hot car is at extreme risk.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that the temperature in a closed car can go up 20 degrees in 10 minutes—and when the child’s temperature reaches 107, the child dies.
“There is no safe amount of time to leave children alone in the car,” Nathan Allen, M.D., an emergency medicine doctor at the University of Chicago, told WebMD.
“Kids are more susceptible and at higher risk for heat-related illness and injury than adults because their bodies make more heat relative to their size and their abilities to cool through sweating are not as developed as adults.”
“On a day that is just 72 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature [inside a car] can increase by 30 to 40 degrees in an hour, and 70% of this increase occurs the first 30 minutes,” added Christopher Haines, DO, director of pediatric emergency medicine at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
“It’s the most helpless feeling to see your great grandbaby in there crying and drenched in sweat,” Riley said. “We want this corrected. We don’t want anybody to lose their baby because this wasn’t taken care of for us.”
‘We Made a Mistake’
Waterford Police Chief Scott Underwood admitted that the situation was not handled correctly.
“It’s a common sense issue,” Underwood said. “You call 911, you expect for somebody to come and give you some help, and we certainly should have gone and done that. We made a mistake and we need to fix that.”
Chief Underwood said that the 911 dispatcher was an experienced veteran who should have known to send assistance immediately.
The chief apologized to Guyton.
“I do appreciate their apology,” Guyton said. “But it’s not something that needs any training to know—it’s common sense. You send help when someone is begging you to come help them save their child out of a hot car.
“It’s just something anybody should have known. It’s common sense.”
