A 3-year-old girl from Indiana was found dead after apparently being left in a hot car for two hours after her family returned home from church.
According to Fox 59, police say Hannah Grace Miller died after being found unresponsive inside a vehicle on Sunday evening after a day out with the family.
The family went to church before eating breakfast and buying some groceries, according to Madison County Coroner Marian Dunnichay.
The police said the parents had thought that Hannah had entered the house with her two brothers while they carried the groceries inside and only found out later that their daughter was not in the house.
When the father found Hannah inside the car, he reportedly submerged her in water and tried to perform CPR before taking her to the hospital where she was announced dead.
The coroner said that the child died of acute heat exhaustion/overheating. No foul play is suspected and no signs of trauma were found.
Police said that the girl may have been inside the car for about two hours. "But that's something that we're still looking into, that's part of our investigation as well," said Anderson Police Department Major Joel Sandefur, as reported by Fox 59.
He added, "Well we are investigating so we want to do a thorough investigation that's fair and accurate, so at that point we're just going to go into and let the evidence lead us and direct us in the direction that we need to go at this point," according to Fox 59.
The Herald Bulletin reports that the temperature in Anderson reached around 80 degrees on Sunday. The temperature inside a car can reach as high as 120 degrees after an hour when the temperature outside is 80 degrees, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
NoHeatStoke.org reported that Hanna is the eighth child to die inside a hot car this year. The website noted that an 8-month-old child had died in a hot car in Baytown, Texas just a day after the death of Hannah.
Wayne Township Fire Department Captain Michael Pruitt said that one way to prevent such tragedies is to put things in the backseat of the car when the child is strapped in.
"We just have to do things to remind us that the child is in the backseat. I mean that's easy to say and some people can't ever comprehend why it would even take someone to remind you to do that but it happens, we know it happens, statistics tell us that people are going to forget in this busy world," he said, according to Fox 59.
