Hazard: Leaving Kids In Cars Alone

Whether you've done it deliberately, or accidentally, leaving the kids in the car alone is never a good idea.

And now, depending on where you live, it could be criminal. Nine states have laws against leaving kids in cars, and a handful of others have such measures pending.

But, says The Early Show correspondent Tracy Smith, more than just a crime, it could be a matter of life and death.

That was the case with Palm Beach County, Fla. dentist Dennis Sierra, who police say accidentally killed his infant son last summer when he forgot him in the back of the car.

The judge called it "one of the saddest cases that I've seen here in years."

To Melanie and Ed Hynes, who had just had a baby of their own, it was unthinkable.

"I said, 'What kind of idiot would leave their child in a vehicle?' " Ed remembers.

"I had told him, 'If you ever forgot her, I would kill you!" Melanie says.

"It was like, who would do that? A precious child like that? A gift from god?" Ed continued.

The baby, Mackenzee, was daddy's girl.

"He doted over her," Melanie recalls. "When we went places together and we got out of the car, that was the first thing he did, was get her out of the car."

That's why what happened just two weeks later July was such a shock, Smith observes.

"I was supposed to drop Mackenzee off," Ed says. "And she ended up falling asleep in the back seat."

Ed went to work, forgetting Mackenzee was still in the car.

Eight hours later, Melanie called.

"I said, 'Ed, where's Mackenzee? She's not at day care. And the phone went dead. And I knew."

"Did you know when you got to the car that she was gone?" Smith asked Ed.
"Yeah. I didn't want to believe it. But, yeah."

"When I got there, they were pulling her out of the car," Melannie cried. "And they wouldn't let me hold her. They wouldn't let me touch her. They kept pulling me back and wouldn't let me touch her."

Mackenzee died of hyperthermia, Smith reports. As the car sat in the Florida sun, her body temperature hit 107 degrees.

"You know," Smith remarked to Ed and Melanie, "there are people out there who look at you guys and can divorce themselves from your story by saying, 'I would never do that. What do you say to them?"

"We were the same way," Melanie responded. "It never crossed our minds that we would ever have to go through anything like this."

"You have things on your mind, you're thinking about the rest of your day, you're thinking about what you're going to do next, and you just get, as cruel as it sounds, it escapes your mind," Ed explains.

But heat is only one hazard, Smith adds.

Some parents think it's OK to leave kids in the car with it running and the air conditioning on. That also can be a fatal mistake. Kids can get trapped in power windows, or shift the car into gear, endangering themselves and others.

That's what happened to Michele Struttmann and her son, Harrison.

"Other parents left their children alone in a running vehicle. And their children shifted the vehicle into gear, and it ran over myself and my 2-year-old son."

Harrison was killed. And now his mom and dad devote their time to warning other parents about the danger, starting an organization called Kids in Cars.
"I just want people to realize it only takes a minute. So don't get into the deadly habit of leaving your child alone in a vehicle for just a minute," Struttman warns.

The legal system is still grappling with how to handle these cases.

No charges were filed against the parents involved in Harrison's death.

Dentist Sierra had to do 10 years probation and 500 hours of community service.

"Any words that I can say will not take my pain away," he says.

But just last month, Antonio Balta was convicted of aggravated manslaughter. His baby, Veronica, died when he knowingly left her in the car for 45 minutes while he gambled at a racetrack.

On the witness stand, Balta said, "She was my life, and I suffer her loss every waking hour of each day."

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

No charges have been filed against Ed Hynes.

But his family says losing Mackenzee is, in its own way, a life sentence.

"I don't think there's a bigger punishment than that," Melanie says. "I don't think any amount of prison time or jail could ever punish as bad as living with the fact every day that she's not with us."

One of the reasons people forget a baby's in the car is that, as we all know, you're supposed to put the car seat in the back, so parents often don't have direct eye contact with the child, Smith points out. But now, NASA -- yes, the space agency -- has developed a device that sounds an alarm any time a child is left in a car seat. It should be available in June.