Zero hot car deaths recorded in Maricopa County so far this summer
Jun 27, 2018, 4:11 AM
PHOENIX — It has been 50 days since the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office launched its countywide campaign to remind residents to not leave pets or kids in hot vehicles this summer — and it seems to be working.
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Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said during a press conference Tuesday that there have been zero reported injuries or fatalities of children who were left in hot cars since the “Don’t Leave Me Behind” awareness campaign launched in May.
“It needs to stay at zero,” Montgomery said.
There have been 18 children who have died from vehicular heat stroke across the country in 2018, he added.
However, that does not mean there have been zero hot car deaths in Arizona this year: The deaths of two children in March could be attributed to being left in a hot car, pending autopsy results.
A 20-year-old woman was arrested and charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of child abuse after her two children, 2-year-old boy and a 10-month-old girl, were found deceased in a car.
A 17-year-old woman was also detained after Phoenix police found two children left in a parked car near 19th Avenue and Bethany Home Road on Monday.
Sgt. Vince Lewis with the Phoenix Police Department told KTAR News 92.3 FM that two children — ages 4 and 8 — were left for about 20 minutes in an unattended car in a Target parking lot. The children were not injured, but were hot and “a little sweaty” and were not taken to a hospital.
A report from 2017 found that Arizona had the fourth-most child vehicular heat stroke deaths in the country between 1998 and 2016, with 31 kids dying from heat stroke in hot cars in that time frame. That was fewer than only California (45), Florida (77) and Texas (107).
