When we hear about children who die after being left in a hot car, a common first reaction is to blame the parents involved.
However, it’s often not that simple as parents who have been in this situation often don’t realize what happened until it’s too late.
Whether something else was distracting them, they became confused as to who was supposed to be driving the child that day, or an entire world of other reasons they forgot their child was in the car, it is frighteningly easy for this tragedy to befall them.
However, when someone takes on the responsibility to watch other people’s children and they’re supposed to have systems in place to prevent something like this, this situation takes on a new, worrying context.
On Wednesday morning, a van from Ewing’s Love and Hope Daycare Center in Jacksonville, Florida picked up enrolled children from their homes.
According to a Facebook post by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office , three of these children were siblings.
One of them was a four-month-old infant who was strapped into a car seat in the third row of the van.
By 8:25 am, the van had arrived and the children disembarked and were taken into the center.
However, nobody had released the infant from her car seat after the van was parked at the front of the facility.
It’s unclear how old the baby’s siblings are since none of the children had their identities released, but nobody seemed to recall that she was ever there.
It wasn’t until her mother called to arrange for after-school plans that daycare staff realized that only two of her children were accounted for.
This call came in at 1:03 pm, which was more than four hours after the van had arrived.
And so, when daycare employees went to check the van, they found her unresponsive in the car seat.
By the time police and Jacksonville Fire and Rescue personnel arrived, the baby had been moved to the daycare.
She was then rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
After this tragedy, police started investigating the daycare.
What they discovered was that the daycare’s co-owner, 56-year-old Darryl Ewing, had been driving the van.
Interviews with the center’s employees confirmed that nobody else working there interacted with the van while in was in transit to the center and that it was the driver’s responsibility to ensure all children were offloaded from the van.
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Moreover, Ewing was also responsible for maintaining a driver’s log with the names of all the children he picked up.
Although he had noted the infant’s two siblings, there was no mention of her in the log.
Ewing was arrested in connection with the incident and remained silent when questioned.
He has since been charged with child neglect for failing to “provide the victim with the necessary supervision and provide services to protect the victim’s physical health.”
The investigation remains ongoing.
h/t: Facebook | Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office