A Florida woman faces criminal charges for the death of a 2-year-old girl in her care who was
left behind for seven hours inside a
hot
vehicle
.
Juana Pérez-Domingo, 43, was charged with aggravated homicide of a minor and is being held on a bail of $ 50,000.
According to the Miami-Dade police complaint, the woman was charged with taking the little girl to daycare on Friday morning in Homestead, but since it was still early, she headed home.
But he got distracted,
turned off the car engine and forgot the girl inside the vehicle
, who was tied with a seat belt, on a day when the temperature in that area of South Florida exceeded 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Juana Pérez-Domingo, 43 years old.
Miami-Dade County Corrections
When Pérez-Domingo returned to the car, the girl was found dead
and instead of calling the emergency line, he contacted the mother directly, to whom he reported what had happened.
“I left work at 3:00 pm and I called [Pérez-Domingo] at 3:11 pm and she did not answer me.
Then I called him again at 3:35 pm and he didn't answer me again.
I called her twice and she finally answered me,
she told me that 'the girl is already dead,
' "recalled Elvia Méndez, mother of the minor, in an interview with the local station Telemundo 51.
[A 3-year-old Latina girl abandoned by her mother in the car to tend a marijuana crop dies of heat]
The mother asserted that she rebuked Pérez-Domingo - who does not have a driving license - to tell her details of what happened because "she [the daughter] was not ill."
"I took her, I hugged my girl, but she was already dead,"
lamented the mother.
The minor was taken to a medical facility in Homestead, where her death was certified.
"He told me, early, 'I love you, mommy'
(I love you, mommy)," recalled the mother of the deceased girl who asked for help with the funeral.
"He killed my daughter, I don't know what to do."
Florida is the second state with the highest number of child deaths in vehicles from heatstroke in the last two decades, according to
KidsAndCars.org.
Crime continues to rise in several major US cities.
May 19, 202100: 25
To date, eight children have died in the United States from being inside a vehicle at high temperatures, and
in 2020 another 25 died
from the same causes, according to data from the
No Heat Stroke
organization
.
[Fifty children have died forgotten in cars. The most recent victim spent a full day]
The same source ensures that
from 1998 to this Sunday a total of 891 minors have died from hyperthermia
, an annual average of 38 deaths.
More than half of the deaths (54%) in the period 1998-2020 were of children under 2 years of age, with 53% of the total deaths due to negligence or forgetfulness of their supervisors, according to the organization.
With information from Telemundo 51
, AP and EFE