Child Left Unattended For Hours Dies In Day Care Van
By Henry Frederick, Staff Writer
Daytona Beach News-Journal, August 11, 2001
DAYTONA BEACH — A 2-year-old Port Orange girl died Friday after she was left inside a locked day-care center van in sweltering summer heat for three hours, police and firefighters said.
The temperature inside the van could have exceeded 140 degrees, fire officials said.
The toddler, Zaniyah Hinson, showed no vital signs when emergency personnel arrived at the Abundant Life Academy of Learning at 4:31 p.m., authorities said.
Police and paramedics found the girl inside the day care, receiving CPR from one of the workers, police spokesman Sgt. Al Tolley said.
"This is not an easy day. We all have children," said Tolley, who was among the first officers to arrive at the Abundant Life Ministries complex at 901 Beville Road.
Despite efforts by paramedics, the child was pronounced dead on arrival at Halifax Medical Center, said fire department spokesman Lt. Gene Stone.
He said the transport was standard practice—an extra step at resuscitation that he and others knew would be in vain.
"Nobody can survive that kind of heat—nobody," Stone said, choking back tears.
Police Chaplain Larry Edwards was comforting the girl's mother, Tekella Harris, who was overcome with grief. She was helped to a waiting car by other family members two hours after frantic day-care workers made the tragic discovery.
Tolley said the girl was apparently left inside the locked van and forgotten until her mother arrived at 4:30 p.m. and immediately realized Zaniyah was not with the other children.
"She asked them, 'Where's my child?'" Tolley said.
A day-care worker ran outside to the van with a set of keys and brought the little girl inside, he said. One of the workers performed CPR while another called police.
The day-care center had taken a group of children, possibly as many as 10, to a local park earlier in the day, Tolley said. The van returned three hours before the mother arrived to pick up Zaniyah and her two other children - a 5-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy.
Tolley said he was unsure if the child was left buckled in her child restraint seat while the other children were escorted into the day-care center after returning from the field trip.
"We are treating this as a suspicious death," Tolley said.
Investigators didn't have a lot of answers and were perplexed how a child could be left behind, he said.
A spokesman for the church-run day-care center didn't have any answers, either. The Rev. Marcus Triplett of Abundant Life Ministries could not explain how the child was left in the van but offered his condolences to the family.
"My heart goes out to the mom and her family and everyone involved," Triplett said.
Minutes after emergency personnel responded to the day care, police received another 911 call from a parent who mistakenly locked her 11-month-old baby and keys in her car for several minutes. Police unlocked the car, got the baby out and transported it to Halifax Medical Center, Stone said.
"That baby was lucky," Stone said, adding that every minute a child is locked in a car without ventilation—be it open windows or air conditioning—is a gamble with death.
Stone said a 200-pound man would die under such heat conditions.
"Look at what happened with (NFL football player Korey) Stringer, and he was outside. Like the situation with this little girl who died, the body starts shutting down vital organs, like the kidneys, to try and get blood to the brain. The person goes into heat stroke and the sweating mechanism starts shutting down as well. When the body temperature reaches 103, it starts killing brain cells. I wouldn't be surprised if she suffered a major stroke as a result."
Chaplain Edwards described the family as "deeply religious" and shared scripture with the parents and their two children.
"We told them they have two other healthy kids and they need to put their attention with them. Their children know the difference between heaven and hell. They know their little sister has gone to the good place."
