A 2-year-old girl is dead after being trapped in a hot car while her parents took a nap, police in Dallas said.[[317002311,L]]
The toddler was left strapped to her car seat after other family members got out of the car outside a home in the 11900 block of Garden Terrace Drive Friday evening, according Dallas police spokeswoman Melinda Gutierrez.
Nariyah Raufu, who would have turned three on Aug 21, died Friday night of hyperthermia, or heat stroke, according to a medical examiner's report.
The parents of the toddler told detectives from the Dallas Child Abuse Unit that they had spent the day at Fair Park with their children earlier that day. When they woke up from their nap, the girl's father went outside to work on his car when he found his daughter strapped into her child safety seat, Gutierrez said in a written statement.
The father immediately took the child into the house where he called 911. The mother performed CPR for approximately 30 minutes before she drove the toddler to Children's Medical City, according to Gutierrez.
The girl was pronounced dead at 7:19 p.m. The girl's parents told Child Abuse detectives, who were alerted by an off-duty officer working an extra shift at the hospital, that they believed all children had got out of the vehicle when they returned home, Gutierrez said.
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"A lot of people think, how can this happen? How can you forget about a child? But unfortunately, every summer we hear about these types of tragedies happening," said Doug Shupe, AAA Texas spokesman.
Detectives with Child Protective Services are involved in the investigation. No charges were immediately filed pending further investigation.
A sign on the front door of the family's home asked for quiet and respect in the time of mourning.
According to statistics released by noheatstroke.org, Texas leads the nation in cases of children who have died after being left in hot cars.
"Even on a mild, warm day temperatures inside a vehicle can rise to deadly levels in just ten minutes", Shupe said.
Since 1998, 605 children in the U.S. have died from heat stroke after they were left in hot cars, according to AAA. More than half of those deaths were due to a parent or caregiver forgetting about them.
Between 1998 and 2014, a total of 95 Texas children died from heat stroke resulting from being left in hot vehicles.
Nationwide, nine children have died from being left in hot cars so far in 2015, according to the Department of Meteorology at San Jose State University.
Dallas police are still investigating this case.
NBC 5's Tim Ciesco contributed to this report.
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