A Florida man was arrested and accused of leaving a six-year-old child in a locked car while he went to work, with the youngster dying later at the hospital from extreme heat.
Markise Outing, 24, arrived at a Southern Manatee County Fire Department on May 20 at approximately 5.17pm seeking medical attention for his girlfriend's young daughter, according to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.
Paramedics rushed to assist and found the child unconscious and not breathing. They believed that the girl may have suffered from a cardiac arrest.
After initial attempts to revive the child, the paramedics rushed her to a nearby hospital for further treatment. Before they took her to the hospital, the paramedics noted that her internal body temperature was 107.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The high in the Bradenton area of Manatee County on May 20 was 89 degrees.
The child died later that evening at the hospital.
When asked about her body temperature, Outing told deputies that the girl had been playing in a park and became overheated. However, deputies said in a statement that Outing had inconsistencies in his story, and GPS data investigators collected led them to believe that the child had been left inside a parked car for several hours.
The investigators said that Outing had picked the girl up from school around 2.45pm, and then drove to his place of business in Bradenton, where he allegedly left the girl inside his locked car with the windows rolled up.
Assuming Outing drove directly to the firehouse after discovering the girl unconscious, she would have been locked in the car for approximately three hours.
The MCSO said they believe the temperatures inside the car reached more than 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
An autopsy later revealed that the girl died from extreme heat.
Outing was arrested on June 25 and has been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child. He was booked into the Manatee County Jail.
Earlier this month, an infant died in Santee, California — 18 miles northeast of San Diego — after the two-month-old was left in a car for nine hours, FOX 5 San Diego reports.
On June 12, the infant's family returned to their home around 3pm, but allegedly left the child in their car. Shortly after midnight on June 13, the family found the infant unconscious inside their vehicle.
Santee Sheriff's Station deputies responded to a 911 call at the home after receiving a 911 call around 12.30am and attempted life-saving measures before rushing the infant to a local hospital. No criminal charges have been brought against the infant's family as of June 26.
A study by the group “Kids and Car Safety,” looked at data from 1990 to 2023, that showed at least 1,083 children have died in hot cars in the US over that period.
Texas saw 155 child hot car deaths in that period, Florida was second with 118 deaths, and California was third with 65 deaths.
