Woman charged with child endangerment after leaving 4 young children in vehicle while shopping during extreme heat
Witnesses alerted police and management, and despite the car running and a window open, the children were seen sweating and treated for minor heat exhaustion.
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Police in in Howell Township were called to the Walmart parking lot Sunday after they say a woman left four children alone inside a running vehicle.
It comes as temperatures will only get hotter as the week rolls on.
“This is no joke. Heat exhaustion can happen pretty quickly,” said Amanda Santini, the director of public health nursing services at the Ocean County Health Department.
And for someone left inside a hot vehicle, seconds matter.
“Nausea, vomiting, muscle weakness, fatigue - people get confused. Sometimes they become unconscious and that can all happen very quickly,” said Santini.
Police tell News 12 a 24-year-old woman now faces child endangerment charges after allegedly leaving four children, ages 1 to 11, alone inside a vehicle at the Walmart in Howell Township. Witnesses alerted police and management, and despite the car running and a window open, the children were seen sweating and treated for minor heat exhaustion.
“You got little kids in the car, they’re going to be playing with all the dials if they’re not having adult supervision. I just recommend not leaving anybody unsupervised in the car,” said Santini.
To show how quickly temperatures inside vehicles can rise, News 12 cooled the inside of an Ocean County Health Department vehicle with air conditioning to lower the temperature inside to 82 degrees. The outside air temperature at the time was 83 degrees. After 10 minutes, the crew checked the inside temperature of the vehicle in the shade and saw it rise to 100.6 degrees.
By the end of the week, it will be even hotter inside parked vehicles.
“We’re looking in the 115s, 120s, so we’re going to go 20 degrees 30 degrees higher than that,” said Santini.
And to those skeptics who shrug heat off as simply being part of summer, Santini has a message.
“I get it. Summer heat we do get in the 90s, sometimes 100s, but typically our heat index doesn’t get this high, and could reach maybe even above 110, 112 that’s where it gets dangerous.”
