I know, this is Actually Infuriating, but … Also she didn’t just leave the now-dead kid in the car, she left two in there to die, but one survived. My guess: with brain damage. “Always Beautiful Medical Spa” FFS. Duck lips were totally worth it.
A baby died after his mother left him and his 2-year-old sibling inside a car while she was getting lip filler at a Bakersfield medical spa on a 101-degree day, authorities said.
It is estimated that Hernandez’s children were in the vehicle without air-conditioning for 90 minutes, wrote Det. Kyle McNabb, noting that the internal temperature of a car can rise to a blistering 143 degrees in just one hour of 100-degree weather.
Hernandez told police she found her baby foaming at the mouth and having an apparent seizure after emerging from her procedure at Always Beautiful Medical Spa, according to the police report. She frantically dialed 911, and both her children were transported to a hospital for treatment.
By the time her 1-year-old arrived at Adventist Health hospital, he wasn’t breathing, had no pulse, his lips were blue, and he had an internal body temperature of 107.2 degrees
It’s amazing how lethal cars are and we drive them every day without a care in the world. I never think about the particulate pollution spewing from my brakes or the noxious gases emitted from the exhaust. I don’t consider the pedestrians I will eventually hit if I drive long enough. I never think about anyone dying in my car from heatstroke. I think of my vehicle as the best and only solution to all of my transportation needs because every problem looks like a nail when your only tool is a hammer.
go back to fuckcars. the rest of the world has shit to do.
Reading news like this always breaks my heart because I can’t imagine the kid’s suffering before they died. Hugging my little ones a little tighter today 😓
she should have read her cars manual, and if thr manual didn’t cover the cars anti-features Toyota should be punished
Gonna assume that’s a joke??
The kids died because the engine auto shut off, so it’s actually an interesting question as to whether the manufacturer bears responsibility for having implemented a ‘feature’ dangerously.
Leaving a baby in a car for 90 minutes is neglect and dangerous no matter what features that car had.
I agree. But that doesn’t really address the issue under discussion
It does though. Leaving the baby in the car is the issue. The car manufacturer can’t be responsible for someone being a horrible parent, no matter if their manual said not to leave a baby in the car or not. It’s common sense not to do that.
car manufacturers should inform the users about features that are potentially unintuitive and different from previous cars (let’s say all features that weren’t commonplace 2-3 decades ago)
Is this woman crazy? What kind of sane person would leave their kid alone in a car for two hours, especially in this heat?
Setting aside the ethics and children for a bit, I am disturbed by the idea of leaving a car running on a battery for an hour or longer. That is a good way to run down the battery and needing a AAA towing. Alternatively, leaving the engine on would use up gas. Plus, just general wear and tear on the vehicle.
Cars are expensive enough as it is.
Coming in as a close second after the death of one child and the endangerment of the other: wearing down the car battery.
However, her 2022 Toyota Corolla Hybrid is equipped with an automatic feature that turns the engine off if it has been left running for one hour while in park, police said. Police estimate that the engine turned off around 3 p.m. and the children were left without air conditioning until Hernandez returned around 4:30 p.m.>
Looks like she left the car on and it shut itself off. Still inexcusably stupid, but it wasn’t quite as brain dead as just deciding to leave them in a hot car in the middle of summer.
Her child died because of her stupidity and the over-engineering of the 2022 Toyota Corolla. c/fuckcars
yes, but… you’re telling me that she left a 1 yo and a 2 yo alone for 2,5 hours? forget the car and the weather. You shouldnt do that ANYWHERE. I wouldn’t have left my kid alone for 2,5 minutes at that age.
Our grand parents did this kind of stuff all the time. Kids were allowed to roam free in forests for hours. Weirdly if she’d left the kids in a forest they probably would be fine.
A lot of the danger comes from car infrastructure. Parking lots might as well be the surface of mercury on a hot day with almost no shade. Traffic poses a lethal hazard to kids. Almost all shade is removed on purpose in public urban areas lest god forbid homeless people decide to hang out at a covered rest stop. And don’t even think of letting kids wander around shops or commercial areas.
Not saying this lady did anything right but society has to own up to its role in making urban areas hostile to children.
There’s no way your grandparents left their kids to roam the forest as infants for hours.
my kid would have killed himself climbing up a ledge at that age. a 5 yo maybe, but i would need a source for your claim of 1 yos being left alone for hours in the forest
And honestly, the vehicle engineers are partly to blame for this in my opinion. Are you telling me there are no sensors in the car to let you know if there is a person in the seat so that their stupid little seatbelt not fasten chimes can ring? If they can tell that there’s a person inside, or that there is still a seatbelt buckled, DON’T TURN THE AC OFF AUTOMATICALLY
@Pyr_Pressure @TheLoneMinon Cars are seeming to forget who is in charge.
I’ve a mate who’s just dropped over 100k on a brand new LandCruiser and deliberately went for not the top-spec because it has too many “safety” features. And he’s still finding things like it won’t drive if a door is open - so no leaning out to reverse his towed caravan. Lane departure assist is ridiculously aggressive (and actually dangerous when towing a big caravan). Dog on the back seats sets the seatbelt alarms off. And way too much other stuff. Some of it can be disabled permanently with the aid of an ODB dongle.
Car makers need to just stop.I had to drive a new Toyota Tacoma for a biology job. I needed to drive it in “offroad” conditions, which means there was grass over 12" in height (farm field).
It would automatically slam on the brakes and scare the shit out of me every time I tried to reverse and it thought the grass was something I was going to hit.
Drove me absolutely insane.
I do not condon leaving children alone in a vehicle for ANY amount of time…
But I also absolutely despise vehicle manufacturers thinking their unnecessary “features” are in any way needed at all, especially in a form which cannot be disabled or needs to be disabled after each time the vehicle turns off and then on.
Fucking hate vehicle manufacturer engineers. Probably one of the least needed jobs out there.
VEHICLES ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING THEY NEED, STOP ADDING SHIT EVERY YEAR JUST FOR THE SAKE OF ADDING SHIT.
Well what do you want them to do, increase fuel efficiency??
This, too, is c/fuckcars.
Nature is healing. We don’t need every brain dead genetic abomination reproducing to make more brain dead abominations. Let Darwinism take its course. That’s what trumps mom should’ve done with captain bonespurs.
Pseudoscience.
Darwinism is pseudoscience?
No, attributing this situation to genetics. This woman wasn’t born bad, nobody was. And you weren’t born better than her.
Being dumb enough to let your infant die has a direct effect on the gene pool. Unfortunately, we only have a 50% success rate here. The other one might grow up to cook even more babies. Only time will tell.
No child deserves to die that way. What a horrible take.
I have bad news for you about how much nature cares about being smart or a good parent
I don’t understand how someone makes the logical leaps they do in these kinds of cases. Even from a purely selfish stand point, the risk of exactly what happened and the fallout are just not worth it to make that appointment right then and there or just have the kids sit in the lobby.
I must be losing my grip on reality, trying to reason why someone that thinks this way does the things they do.
if you can afford lip filler, you can afford in a babysitter instead of put their lives at risk, just my 2 cents…
Just get a baby sitter for 2 hours… Assuming it’s really that critical (which obviously this was not…)
So many steps were taken here that made no sense. Like why would the mom even think it was ok, and why did the office tell the mom “Yea they can wait in the lobby” like I assume she didn’t give an age or anything cause no office worker is going to knowingly allow this to happen, or allow a 1 and 2 year old to just sit in the lobby.
Your first sentence, you assumed logical. The average person is dumb. Straight up stupid.
Of course it was Bakersfield.
I can barely handle being in a car that has been sitting in the sun for the 5 minutes it takes for the AC to get up to speed.
Now the 20-year-old mother has been charged with one felony count of involuntary manslaughter and two felony counts of willful cruelty to a child, according to court records.
Is it not a specific crime in California/US to leave a child locked in a car?? We don’t fluff around with that in Australia. Also have exceptions to property damage laws for bystanders breaking windows.
It likely is going to fall under child neglect. I don’t know of an actual law specifically for locking a kid in a car.
As for the exceptions thing, that is the same in the states, it usually falls under law(s) categorized as “Good Samaritan laws”. They are moreso meant to protect the bystander if they see someone in peril but, breaking the window to save a kid or pet that is clearly in distress would normally fall under that. Personal injury also usually fall under these laws, like if you accidentally injured someone getting them to safety (like after a car accident) when it was clear they were in a dangerous location, it helps relieve the bystander liability.
It’s also supposed to be the reason that EMS/Fire/Police have Qualified immunity. because when the call to action arises, you don’t want your first responders first thought to be “How will this negatively affect me” you want it to be “how can I do the most in this situation”
Initial charges are just to justify holding a person, more charges can always be added later when the prosecutor has taken more time to examine the case.
If leaving a child in a car was a crime, you’d think they’d charge that up front?
Most criminal laws are at the state level so it would be a CA law.
UNATTENDED CHILD IN MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY ACT
There is no need for a seperate law in the event of harm or death since that would just fall under existing harm/death of a child laws.
She has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is being held in a hot car with no AC in lieu of $1,080,000 bail, according to the Kern County district attorney’s office.
FTFY
Unfortunately this is a pretty common occurrence. There was a big furor about it about a decade ago with a social media fad called the “hot car challenge” where adults would sit in hot cars turned off in the sun to see how long they could last in them ostensibly to build awareness of the problem, and there were all sorts of helpful tips and design changes made to cars and phones to try to make it more difficult to forget your kids in hot cars. Myself I wonder if any of it had any actual impact because surely the sort of people who leave their kids in hot cars aren’t the smartest and probably don’t keep up with safety PSAs about the issue.
Plenty of smart parents fuck up while sleep deprived. That’s what made it such a popular tragedy to make PSAs about.
After having kids I totally understand how it can happen by mistake.
As a parent myself, I’m now doubly amazed at how few cases of forgetting happen. It’s so easy to do, and your brain is reduced to blomonge by sleep deprivation.
FYI, the “baby on board” signs aren’t generally meant as “don’t crash into me” signs, but “assume the driver is drunk and distracted” signs. Having been there, I try and give them plenty of space!
The left shoe trick - throwing my shoe in the car next to the kid - probably saved my kid’s life more than once.
One kind of parents who have these tragedies are tired ones. Which is most parents with small children.
Edit: not relevant in this case, but I’ll take any chance to advertise the shoe trick.
I’ve been fucking tired as all hell, but a) I would not be driving a car with my child in it if I was so tired that I would forget I had a child. The fuck? That’s it. There’s no b). I would also fall asleep before I would forget I had a child. I cannot believe people really need a “trick” to help them remember they have a child. I just cannot relate.
a) I would not be driving a car with my child in it if I was so tired that I would forget I had a child. The fuck?
I hope you’re thankful for a lifestyle where you have that option. We should all strive to build a world where everyone does.
I mean, taking the bus should be an option in most cases, or? Maybe I’m inconsiderate right now?
Plenty of place don’t have buses in the states
In most US cities, no, it’s not an option. But we should work to make it an option :)
This article is worth a read. I think that anyone who says “I could NEVER…” are the exact people that are playing with fire. I don’t have children, but I still get anxiety thinking about what would happen if I did and any number of variables came up at the wrong moment in time.
This is not an attack on you. This article really helped me understand a situation where it isn’t some irresponsible person just leaving their kids alone for hours to get Botox assuming the car will stay on and cool. Humans are humans, and it’s sickening and devastating to think about how a simple mistake, a hiccup in the brain, could lead to the death of your own child.
I wish I could read it—it’s paywalled. 😞
Great article and one I always share when this argument comes up. It can happen with one simple mistake.
As a parent myself it always boggles my mind that people can forget that they have kids in the car with them. I’m always in dad mode when I have any kids with me, so I’ve never even come close to forgetting a kid in the car. Forgetting to grab the kid’s backpack for school sure, but forgetting a whole child in the car?
The biggest thing that most of those people have in common is that they think it couldn’t happen to them.
The thing is, I have two kids, and have heard about hot car deaths for years before having kids, so I make sure it doesn’t happen. I never leave the kids alone in the car on a hot day. They come with. Luckily we have cold weather most of the year so they can sit alone for a few minutes in a cold car, but never during the summer. Like, even before hearing about hot car deaths, I knew from a young age that cars get hot, and it’s just common sense not to leave a child in there, because I wouldn’t want to sit in there myself for any amount of time. Doesn’t matter if the AC is on full blast, that thing might cut out or fail for any reason, and then my kids are goners.
Before I had kids I would’ve been right there with you, but I am in a completely different mindspace anytime I’m caring for my kids than when I’m not.
When I’m in “dad mode” there’s a significant portion of my attention that’s constantly running through “Are the kids getting into trouble? When did I last see them? When were they last fed/watered/potty breaks? Are we about to pass something that they’ll see and decide they need to go to and therefore cost more time/money than I’ve budgeted for this trip and should I be taking a different route to avoid it? When did I last observe the kids alive, has it been more than 60 seconds I need to check on them again…” And the only way to break out of dad mode is if somebody else has taken over active care/monitoring of the kids or if the kids are both asleep in their beds. It’s a biological state that I seriously did not know was possible, and I simply can’t turn it off.
So when I say I can’t forget my kids in the car, this is what I mean, I’m so actively aware of my kids location and status at all times that I’m the primary caretaker that they can’t even try to wander off in a park or store without my noticing
Yeah, I’ve got that too. But confidence leads to complacency. I’ve thankfully never had it happen when it mattered, but on a couple of occasions I’ve found myself not being hypervigilant when I normally would be. It’s back on once I notice, but it only takes one slip up.
Most of these cases also involve a change in routine. You go about your normal day, feeling the way you normally do, because your mind has forgotten that something is different. Trusting your instinct to overcome that just isn’t a foolproof plan. I mean there is no foolproof plan, but there’s also no harm in taking a little extra precaution in your routine like putting your shoe or your wallet in the back seat.
confidence leads to complacency
I find that after having kids and seeing on the news what can go wrong, there is zero confidence in the kids or their surroundings. That’s why I have confidence in myself that I would never forget them, because I’m always scared. 😆 Never let them out of my sight on a parking lot, e.g. They will just start running and you need to wrangle and holler. Hold their hand over a cross walk, etc etc etc.
I mean I’ve left the house without my glasses and I’m legally blind without them, so I can understand just how absentminded a human can get.
That’s the thing. We non-absent-minded people cannot relate to how absent-minded people can be. We do not understand.
It depends how often you drive without the kids.
If you don’t always drop the kids off yourself, it’s easy to get half way to work on autopilot before realising you meant to drop them off.
Sleep deprivation is a weird thing.
I felt the same, until I had my first lousy sleeper (child who had trouble sleeping due to minor health stuff). After a month of lost sleep, I couldn’t remember my own name sometimes. I read once that sleep deprivation is effectively brain damage, and after that experience, I believe it.
it must be on purpose at this point. how many times does this need to happen before people stop doing it?
Are you under the impression that every hot car death is caused by the same person?
