Springdale : Girl, 3, dies in mother’s hot car

BY MICHELLE BRADFORD

Posted on Saturday, August 9, 2003

SPRINGDALE — A 3-yearold girl died Friday after being found inside her mother’s hot car at a Springdale apartment complex where she apparently wandered away from home two hours earlier.

Officer Brian Simmons, Springdale police spokesman, said the mother called 911 about 3:30 p.m. and reported the child lost from Fox Run Apartments, 770 S. 40 th Street.

Police found a friend of the mother’s performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the girl in the family’s living room, Simmons said. The girl had been found in the back seat of her mother’s car in the apartment complex parking lot.

Police took over CPR, but the girl was unresponsive, Simmons said. She was pronounced dead at Northwest Medical Center of Washington County in Springdale. "The mother told our dispatchers the girl may have wandered out of the residence and into the car," Simmons said from the apartment complex Friday evening. "We don’t know exactly what the circumstances were, and detectives are trying to piece together a chain of events."

Simmons wouldn’t identify the mother, child or family friend who performed CPR. He said police will withhold details until they are further along in the investigation.

Police are working on the impression that the death of the girl — whom neighbors described as blonde and prone to wander outside — might have been heat related. The high temperature in Springdale on Friday was 91 degrees. "The extreme ambient temperature in the vehicle may have very well been a contributor to the child’s death," Simmons said.

In April 1998, two children died in Benton County after being left in a black Geo Storm for about eight hours. Vicky Crisp, 1, and her cousin, Sidney Pippen, 4, months, suffered heat stroke and suffocated in the hot car.