An autopsy report indicates a five-year-old boy found dead in a vehicle at a La Joya ISD school last Thursday likely died after being left in a hot car, according to Justice of the Peace Juan “J.J.” Peña.
Peña, who responded to the death and ordered an autopsy, said the report indicates the child died of heat asphyxiation.
“Well asphyxiation due to I guess being (locked) in a car due to the heat,” he said.
La Joya ISD police and the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office, who are investigating the incident as an equivocal death, confirmed last Friday that police discovered the boy unresponsive in the vehicle of one of his relatives who teaches at Dr. Americo Paredes Elementary.
La Joya ISD Superintendent Gisela Saenz described the death at the Mission campus as an “isolated, tragic incident.”
Law enforcement have been reluctant to release any additional details about the death and decline to say whether anyone has been arrested or is facing criminal charges in connection with it.
La Joya ISD Police Chief Raul Gonzalez said Friday that investigators are waiting on a medical examiner’s report before releasing any additional information.
“It’s typical…whenever we have a death, the most important thing is the medical examiner’s assessment of the cause of death,” he said.
The National Weather Service clocked temperature’s in the area at a high of 101 the day police found the child’s body.
Jan Null, an adjunct professor and research meteorologist at San Jose State University in California, estimates the temperature inside a car that day would have been as much as 30 degrees higher.
“What it feels like? That’s hot as Death Valley, which is the hottest spot on the planet,” he said. “Basically it’s an unsurvivable temperature, even for an adult. But for a small child — their body would heat up even faster than an adult would.”
Null is an advocate for preventing heatstroke deaths of children inside vehicles and aggregates statistics on those deaths online.
According to him, 928 children have died as a result of pediatric vehicular heat strokes since 1998. Null says 21 of those deaths occurred this year.
The child who died last week was 5 years old. Null says children who die in hot cars are usually younger, but deaths of older children are not unheard of.
“There have been cases as old as 14 years old,” he said. “There was a 14-year-old girl in high school who got trapped inside a car. She couldn’t get out. It was a car with electronic locks on it, and for whatever reason she was stuck.”
The child who died last week died at a school. That, Null said, is not uncommon.
“A surprisingly high number seem to be at schools,” he said. “A great number are where children are forgotten to be dropped off at childcare.”
Null said children also die in hot cars when parents intentionally leave them in a car to run an errand or when they get into a car unsupervised. He said children should be taught how to exit through a front door or to honk the car horn if they become trapped.
“But most important, teach them not to play in cars,” he said. “Keep keys and fobs away from kids.”
Adults can be proactive and hot car deaths are preventable, he said. Anyone who sees a child unattended in a vehicle should contact police or take immediate action if the child is in distress.
Although high-tech solutions to hot car deaths exist, Null says simple reminders can be effective, steps like leaving a wallet or purse in the back with the child or simple visual cues.
“It’s a long time before technology is gonna be the answer,” he said. “So people can keep a stuffed animal back in that car seat. When you put the child there, put that stuffed animal in the front as a reminder to yourself.”
Speaking in generic terms, Hidalgo County Health Authority Ivan Melendez said the difference between heat stroke and heat asphyxiation is largely semantical.
He said that a child in a hot car in the Rio Grande Valley would likely be unconscious within an hour and dead within two hours.
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