A New Jersey toddler died after she was apparently left by herself inside a car on a hot day this week, authorities said Wednesday.
The 2-year-old girl was found Tuesday shortly after 2 p.m. in Franklin Township, roughly 40 miles southwest of New York City, the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
Weather reports indicate a high of nearly 90 degrees for the area.
Authorities had responded to a call of a child in cardiac arrest at a home, the prosecutor’s office said.
It isn't clear how long the girl had been in the car, the prosecutor’s office said. Nor is it clear whether she was in a car seat, NBC New York reported.
The child, who hasn't been publicly identified, was pronounced dead at the scene, the prosecutor’s office said.
Neighbors told NBC New York that the girl was in the car's back seat in the driveway of the family's home.
It appeared her parents didn’t know she was in the car, the station reported, citing neighbors. A neighbor, Alex Krstavski, told the station that after officers knocked on the home’s front door, he saw the child’s mother collapse.
She was taken from the house in an ambulance, he told the station.
"They’re great parents," a neighbor told the station. "I’ve seen them be very loving and doting on their daughters.”
Additional details about the death weren't immediately available. No one has been charged in the girl’s death.
According to Noheatstroke.org, a website run by a San Jose State University meteorologist that tracks hot car deaths, there have been 21 cases of fatal vehicular pediatric heatstroke in the U.S. this year.
Nearly 1,000 children have died since 1998, according to the site.
While last year's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act mandated systems for new passenger vehicles that can alert parents to children left in back seats, the meteorologist, Jan Null, has said even the most sophisticated technology will be likely to prevent only some of those deaths.
