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North Carolina police charge mother after 8-year-old dies from being left in hot car
A woman faces an involuntary manslaughter charge in North Carolina after her child died from being left in a hot car, police said.
The 8-year-old girl was transported to a local hospital after being found in critical condition in a vehicle in Charlotte on Wednesday evening but later died from a heat-related medical emergency, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The child’s mother was charged with involuntary manslaughter and child abuse by willful act causing serious injury.
The 36-year-old woman is being held in the Mecklenburg County Jail on a $250,000 bond, jail records show.
The woman told police she left her daughter in the car while she went to work, according to an arrest affidavit. Before she left, she said she kept the air running in the car, but the child may have turned it off because she was cold.
The last time the woman heard from her daughter was via text about an hour and a half before she returned to the car, authorities said. That’s when she discovered the child lying on the backseat floorboard unresponsive.
Using a hammer, police said the woman busted the back window to reach her daughter. She then drove to the hospital but stopped at a nearby business to get help, authorities said. Someone called 911 to report the emergency, police said.
After emergency responders took the child to Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center, the girl was pronounced dead early Thursday morning.
The woman told police she shouldn’t have left her child in the car and that she knew it was 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 degrees Celsius) outside, according to the affidavit. She was appointed a public defender to represent her, according to court records. Her next scheduled hearing is on July 17.
Every 10 days, a child dies of heat stroke after being left in a car, and a majority of these deaths happen because someone forgets a child in their car, according to National Highway Safety Traffic Safety Administration. More than 1,000 children have died in the last three decades.
A CBS News data analysis shows that 83% of all hot car deaths over the last six years happened between May and September.
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Donald Trump is trying to leverage a Supreme Court decision holding that presidents are immune from federal prosecution for official actions to overturn his conviction in a New York State criminal case.
A letter to the judge presiding over the New York case is not yet public. It was filed Monday after the Supreme Court’s landmark holding further slowed the former president’s criminal cases.
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment when asked about Trump’s effort to overturn the conviction, which was first reported by The New York Times.
Trump’s criminal case in New York is the only one of four against him to go to trial. On May 30, a unanimous jury concluded Trump was guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up reimbursements for a “hush money” payment to an adult film star. Trump signed off on falsifying the records while he was in the White House in 2017.
Monday’s Supreme Court decision extended broad immunity from criminal prosecutions to former presidents for their official conduct. But the issue of whether Trump was engaged in official acts has already been litigated in his New York case.
Trump sought in 2023 to move the case from state to federal jurisdiction. His lawyers argued that the allegations involved official acts within the color of his presidential duties.
That argument was rejected by a federal judge who wrote that Trump failed to show that his conduct was “for or relating to any act performed by or for the President under color of the official acts of a president.”
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties.”
Trump initially appealed that decision, but later dropped it.
His case went to trial in April, and soon after the jury’s unanimous decision finding him guilty, Trump vowed to appeal the conviction.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced July 11. Prosecutors were expected to file a sentencing recommendation Monday. That filing has not been made public.