Authorities in Richland County, South Carolina, are investigating the death of two twin babies who were found in a car in front of a daycare center on Wednesday.
Just after 5:30 p.m., police responded to an emergency call about
two babies as young as 20 months in an unresponsive vehicle in the parking lot of the Sunshine House child care center
in Blythewood
.
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Aug. 13, 202102: 43
Emergency teams arrived to assist the babies, but they
were pronounced dead at the scene.
At a news conference Thursday, the county coroner's office said the twins, whom they identified as Bryson and Brayden McDaniel,
were in the vehicle for nine and a half hours before 911 was called,
said Nida Rutherford, coroner for the county who attended the autopsies.
[This woman was taking care of a 2-year-old girl and left her forgotten in a car: she died as a result of the heat. Now facing criminal charges]
"We think the children were put in the car around 7:30 or 8 in the morning," Rutherford said.
Authorities are investigating the deaths of two twins in a car parked outside an early learning center in South Carolina.Google street view
The coroner added that the babies
did not show any physical signs of trauma or abuse.
The cause of death will appear, for now, as "pending further studies", but according to Rutherford it is
"likely that the cause is hyperthermia", that is, they died from heat.
[A 3-year-old Latina girl abandoned by her mother in the car to tend a marijuana crop dies of heat]
The car in which they were found belonged to the family of the minors and
the babies were enrolled in this academy.
So far, authorities
have no indication that staff at the Sunshine House,
located about 20 miles from Columbia, were
involved
in the incident.
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"With the evidence we have, we do not believe that Sunshine Academy staff were involved or complicit in any way in the deaths of Bryson and Brayden McDaniel," he said.
Rutherford added that the parents are totally "devastated" and that this is the first case of its kind this year in the county.
With information from NBC News and WISTV.