Three-year-old girl dies in hot car after 'distracted' dad forgot she was buckled in seat on driveway
A three-year-old girl tragically died in a boiling hot car after her dad forgot she was buckled in the carseat on the family driveway.
On the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend in 2019, Charlotte Jones was off sick from pre-school.
Despite that, Scott Jones was doing his normal routine of dropping his eldest kids off at school and returning to his Arizona home office to work.
However, the father had completely forgotten that he had taken Charlotte along for the ride in his truck to drop her siblings off at school.
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And when Scott returned home, he was in autopilot mode, as he hopped out his truck and began a day's work.
Tragically, Scott had logged on as temperatures topped 98F, and only realized his young daughter was still in the car when his wife called to check on them four hours later.
Recalling that heartbreaking phone call mom, Angela Jones, told Fox News Digital: "All of a sudden I could just hear a panic in his voice. I initially thought she had gotten into the pool or something like that, and then he was like, ‘Oh, my God, I don't think I ever got her out of the car.’ Then it hit him what has happening and he ran out into the driveway."
Scott immediately called 911, but it was tragically too late. Charlotte had succumbed to the heat and died in the car.
And the family is certainly not alone.
Research has discovered that dozens of American children die from being left inside hot vehicles, with the majority of incidents stemming from parents leaving their children in the car.
Examples of tragedy include miscommunication between parents or forgetting to drop the child off at day-care.
Janette Fennell, the founder of Kids and Car Safety, says that around 55 percent of child deaths in hot cars can be attributed to kids being unknowingly left in vehicles.
She said: "And it's not about good or bad parenting, it's kind of the Swiss cheese model where all kinds of holes line up perfectly at the wrong time.
"In most cases, these are good parents. In general, 90% of the incidents are good parents and they certainly would never even harm a hair on their [child’s] head."
Angela says that Charlotte was the beating heart of their family and they miss her terribly.
"She was our sassy one, the funny one, always making funny faces, our little ham," the mom said.
"She was just the light in our family, and we are constantly talking about her. We try to honor her memory."
Callum Jones