Heat Wave Kills Baby In Car Mix-Up
A 7-month-old infant was found dead in the heat of a parked car Thursday near the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, authorities said. Hours later, a 2-year-old toddler was found dead in a vehicle in a suburb of Cincinnati.
The infant's name has not been released. Her father is a research analyst at the nearby medical school. Her mother is a staff pediatrician at St. Louis Children's Hospital.
On a day when the temperature reached the upper 90s, a woman spotted the baby girl, called 911 and broke the car window, police Capt. James Gieseke said. The child was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The child had been in the car for three hours, Gieseke said. It's believed the mother left the child in the back seat of the father's car, but that the father thought the mother had taken the child and didn't realize it was his turn to drop her off at daycare.
"There was a horrible, devastating mix-up as to who was going to take the child to day care," Gieseke said. "It's one of the car seats that have to be in the back seat and faces to the rear."
Details were still sketchy because the couple were too distraught to give complete statements, Gieseke said.
The extreme heat meant a short school day in St. Louis again Friday. About one-third of St. Louis school buildings lack air conditioning.
Cincinnati public schools were closed for a second day Friday because of the heat. The days off will count as snow days. Other districts throughout southwestern and central Ohio plan were also giving students the day off or planning to dismiss them early because of the heat.
The ongoing drought and weeks of extreme heat have drawn down water supplies and cities across Indiana and officials are asking their residents to conserve. Some cities are issuing pleas to limit watering the grass, washing cars and filling swimming pools, while others have restricted the times when residents can use water outdoors.
Thousands of farmers across the Southeast are struggling to deal with drought conditions not seen in some places for 50 years, reports CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasan. Georgia has had $787 million in losses, Tennessee, $500 million, and Alabama, $251 million.
"We're at God's mercy," said one farmer. "I guess when God wants to have rain, he'll send us rain."
Jan Null, adjunct professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University, said the baby's death in St. Louis was the 22nd in the U.S. this year involving a child left in a hot vehicle.
A 2-year-old girl was found dead Thursday in her mother's sweltering sport utility vehicle in Union Township, about 20 miles southeast of Cincinnati, police said.
The girl, Cecilia Slaby, was strapped in a car seat in the rear of the vehicle, which was in the parking lot of Glen Este Middle School, where the girl's mother, Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby, is an assistant principal, said Clermont County Prosecutor Don White. No charges had been filed.
An autopsy was planned to determine the cause of death. Temperatures in the area reached 100 degrees Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
Police said they received several 911 calls about 3:15 p.m. from people who spotted the girl in the vehicle.
Aretha Franklin has canceled her Sept. 1 concert in Atlanta because of the heat. The Franklin show was to kick off the annual Montreux Jazz Festival on Labor Day weekend.
Meanwhile, 40 firefighters from Pennsylvania and Mississippi were on their way to Alabama to help battle a wildfire that had burned more than 400 acres of wilderness Thursday as temperatures soared into triple digits yet again in a month of record heat.
The blaze was still growing in the Talladega National Forest between Lineville and Talladega, but officials hoped to contain it before it could spread further through east Alabama.