Two infants have tragically died just an hour apart after they were left in hot cars in sweltering heat on Friday in separate states.
A baby girl in New Jersey died on Friday after she was left in a hot minivan parked at a local train station for more than eight hours in blistering temperatures.
The child, 22-month-old Milliani Robertson-Lawrence, was found unresponsive sitting on her car seat with the passenger window broken in the parking lot of a PATCO Hi-Speedline commuter rail station in Lindenwold.
Cops arrived to the scene following a 911 call around 3.30pm and she was pronounced dead at the scene just before 4pm.
According to the child’s father Nasie Lawrence, Milliani was being cared for by her aunt and uncle and investigators say she may have been left in the car for more than eight hours.
A 22-month-old baby girl named Milliani Robertson-Lawrence died after she was found unresponsive in a hot car in a New Jersey train station parking lot on Friday
She was found unresponsive sitting on her car seat with the passenger window broken in the parking lot of a PATCO Hi-Speedline commuter rail station in Lindenwold and pronounced dead before 4pm on Friday
According to the child’s father Nasie Lawrence, Milliani was being cared for by her aunt and uncle and investigators say she may have been left in the car for more than eight hours
People pictured mourning at the Lindenwold train station parking lot after the discovery of the dead child
On Friday Lindenwold reached 87F degrees, but with the heat index it felt more like 92F.
‘Once I got the call, I thought it was a joke,’ Lawrence said to CBS. ‘I pretty much broken down and lost my mind.’
Lawrence was in jail for the last 18 months and was trying to get custody of his young daughter.
‘How do you forget that there’s a 2-year-old who makes a lot of noise in the car?’ Lawrence added. ‘You killed my daughter. You took her from me.’
‘My heart just broke,’ Ashley Iwu, whose car was in the area, said to WPVI. ‘I can barely stand outside and so, who can imagine what the temperatures are like in the car.’
So far, no charges have been filed, a spokeswoman for the Camden County prosecutor’s office said on Monday. An investigation into the circumstances of her death is underway.
‘How do you forget that there’s a 2-year-old who makes a lot of noise in the car?’ Milliani’s father Nasir Lawrence said. ‘You killed my daughter. You took her from me’
About 900 miles away in Booneville, Mississippi a 21-month-old boy was found dead in a hot car in a parking lot in blistering hot temperatures.
Police found the boy in the rural parking lot that is shared by Mighty Cubs Daycare and Field of Dreams adult daycare, though ‘neither business had anything to do with the events that led to the death of the child’, Booneville police said Monday.
Authorities said the child, described as a white male, had been left in the car at a workplace in Boonville for several hours during the day before arriving to the daycare parking lot around 5pm.
Cops were called around 5pm and found the child dead inside the vehicle.
A friend of a parent of the deceased child told WTVA that the parent thought they dropped the child off at daycare earlier that day. They didn’t realize the child was still in the car until the end of the day.
In Booneville, Mississippi a 21-month-old boy was found dead in a hot car in a daycare parking lot in blistering 93F temperatures on Friday
A friend of a parent of the deceased child said the parent thought they dropped the child off at daycare earlier that day and didn’t realize the child was in the car the entire time until they returned to the childcare center at 5pm
On Friday the temperature in Booneville reached 90F degrees with a heat index of 93F.
In the boy’s case, no arrests have been made police said Monday.
Investigators are still taking statements and examining surveillance video at the scene, according to ABC.
2019 has seen a devastating number of child hot car deaths mount reaching 35 deaths this year so far, with 10 deaths marked in August along according to national non-profit KidsAndCars.org.