In a tragic incident this week, two young children lost their lives after being left unattended in hot vehicles – an 8-week-old baby girl in New Jersey and a 2-year-old boy in New York. The tragic events marked the 11th and 12th hot car fatalities in the United States this year, according to official reports.
The first incident took place in Lakewood Township where 28-year-old father Avraham Chaitovsky left his infant daughter in a vehicle for an extended period of time amid the sweltering summer heat wave. Despite lifesaving efforts by officers who responded to the report of a child in cardiac arrest near New Egypt Road around 1:45 p.m., the baby was declared dead on scene, according to police and prosecutors. Chaitovsky was inside of the Kollel Cheshek Shlomo synagogue while his daughter was trapped in the hot car. He was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
The second incident occurred shortly before 7 p.m., when officers in Monticello, New York responded to a 911 call about a child in cardiac arrest inside a vehicle located outside Sleepy Hollow Apartment Complex. First responders were not able to revive the 2-year-old boy, who was pronounced dead at the scene by the Sullivan County coroner. It’s unclear how long he was left in the vehicle.
Temperatures topped 90 degrees in the tri-state area on Monday as blistering heat has suffocated most of the country, leading to these tragic accidents.
According to national nonprofit Kids and Car Safety, last week a 5-year-old twin died in Nebraska after his foster mom left him trapped in a vehicle for seven hours in 89-degree heat while she went to work at a nail salon. Earlier this month, a 2-year-old girl died after her 37-year-old father left her in the brutal Arizona heat for hours as he played video games; the father was charged with murder.
A total of 29 children died from hot-car related deaths in 2023 and another 36 died in 2022, according to Kids and Car Safety. The average number of US child hot car deaths is 38 per year. Amber Rollins, the director of Kids and Car Safety told The Post that a majority of hot car fatalities involve loving, caring parents who slip into “autopilot mode”, leading to the child being left behind in the car.
The organization recommends safety tips such as putting an item necessary for a parent’s day – like a work laptop or wallet – in the backseat to train oneself to open the back door every time they leave the vehicle. They also suggest keeping a “reminder item” like a large stuffed animal in their vehicles that “lives in the backseat of your car. When the children are in the car, parents should put the item in the front as a visual cue to remind them their child is there.
Kids and Car Safety helped pass federal legislation as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which includes a mandate for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to issue federal safety regulations to the auto industry on technology that automakers must put in vehicles to prevent hot car deaths. However, Rollins said the standards were supposed to be submitted last fall but still haven’t been issued; they’ve repeatedly pushed back the deadline, with the agency announcing just last week they’d need until April 2025. Meanwhile, every week, children continue dying, families continue burying their children and it’s unacceptable,” she said.
Since 1990, at least 1,095 children have died in hot cars, about 88% of whom were 3 years old or younger, according to the organization.
