She went to shop at Macy’s. She left her 2-year-old daughter alone inside car, cops say.
Shopping led a South Florida mom to leave her 2-year-old girl alone inside a locked car despite the outside temperature being 96 degrees.
Thamyres Maria Araujo Ponce, 32, was arrested Monday and charged with child neglect after deputies discovered her daughter had been left unattended for nearly 30 minutes, according to the probable cause affidavit. Jail records show she posted her $1,000 bond later that evening.
A 911 call of a child locked inside a Nissan sent Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office deputies to The Mall at Wellington Green, located at 10300 Forest Hill Blvd., just before 4:15 on Monday. They arrived to discover a toddler who was “crying, sweating and appeared to be in distress,” deputies say.
One of the deputies then broke the driver’s side window and removed the girl. Palm Beach County Fire Rescue examined her on scene, telling deputies that she had a body temperature of 102 degrees, according to the affidavit.
Investigators reviewed the mall’s security footage and found that Ponce left the toddler alone for about 25 minutes.
About 10 minutes after deputies responded to the mall, Ponce returned to the car. She later confessed to leaving her child alone while shopping at Macy’s, deputies say.
The report did not say what happened to the child after the mom was arrested.
Approximately 10 percent of all hot car deaths involving children have occurred in Florida since 1990, according to KidsAndCars.org. The site reports a total of 949 children have died during that time frame.
According to a 2018 study published in the journal Temperature, the temperature inside a car parked in the sun on a 95-degree day or hotter, hit an average of 116 degrees within the hour.
A 10-month-old girl died in May after being left inside a car in Clewiston in Central Florida.
Noah Sneed, a 2-year-old boy, died in July 2019 after Oakland Park daycare workers didn’t remove him from a van.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 7:43 PM.
