The Saturday afternoon death of a northwest Georgia infant is under investigation after he was apparently left in a vehicle for about two hours.
The 11-month-old boy’s death occurred in Chickamauga, which is about 115 miles northwest of Atlanta, according to the Walker County Sheriff’s Department.
The infant had been with members of the family – grandparents, an adult daughter and another grandchild – who were returning from church in the mid-afternoon, according to a statement by the sheriff’s department.
The other members of the family left the car, but the infant apparently remained, according to the statement.
The boy’s mother, who works at night, was asleep. When the mother woke, she asked about the child – and only then did the grandparents realize that the infant was not in the house.
They found the child in the car and called 911 at 5:21 p.m. In an effort to save the infant’s life, they administered CPR. Law enforcement and emergency services arrived and continued to perform CPR.
The child was transported to Hutcheson Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, according to the sheriff department’s release.
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said that temperatures in the car could have soared, estimating that in 15 minutes they could reach between 131 and 172 degrees.
The child’s body was to be taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, but the investigation will be conducted by the Walker County Sheriff’s Office, according to Scott Dutton, a spokesman for the GBI.
This is the 19th child to die in a hot car in the United States this year and the first in Georgia, according to Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsandCars.org.
Georgia ranks seventh in the nation for the number of children dying from heatstroke in vehicles in the past two decades, she said: A total of 28 of the 700 such deaths have been in the state.
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