On the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend in 2019, Scott Jones went about his normal morning routine, dropped off his two sons at school, then returned to his Arizona home office to get to work.
About four hours later, his wife, Angela, called to ask about their youngest child, 3-year-old Charlotte, who they had chosen to keep from preschool that week, staying home with her father.
However, Scott had completely forgotten that he had put Charlotte in his truck to take her sisters to school, and when he got home he went on autopilot, hopping out of the truck and getting to work as usual.
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Charlotte Jones died after being left in her father’s truck for four hours following the accident. (Courtesy of iStock)
“And all of a sudden, I heard the panic in his voice,” Angela Jones told Fox News Digital. “At first I thought maybe she’d fallen in the pool or something, and then he said, ‘Oh my God, I don’t think I could get her out of the car,’ and then he realized what was happening and ran out into the roadway.”
Angela recalled that Charlotte, who the family affectionately called “Charlie,” was left alone in the car as temperatures in Arizona reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit that day.
Scott called 911, but it was too late – Charlie collapsed from the scorching heat.
The family is not alone.
Every year, dozens of children die in the United States after being left in hot cars, most of which occur because a parent forgot they had left their child in the car in the first place. Other causes include poor communication between parents or guardians or forgetting to drop off a child at daycare.
“This isn’t about good or bad parenting, it’s like a Swiss cheese model with all kinds of holes lining up perfectly at the wrong time.”
About 55% of heatstroke deaths occur when children are left unattended in a car without their consent, said Janet Fennell, founder of Kids and Car Safety, a group that collects data on child heatstroke deaths and advocates for better car safety standards, and has been counting such deaths since 1990.
“Most of the time, these are good parents,” Fennell says. “Generally, 90 percent of the cases are good parents, and they would never harm a hair on their child.” [child’s] Head. “
Fennell said the number of deaths from car seats has plummeted since the ban on passenger car seats, but deaths from heatstroke in cars have increased and remain high. The group has recorded at least 1,083 deaths from heatstroke in cars between 1990 and 2023, including 29 deaths last year and 36 deaths in 2022. Most deaths occur in the summer.
Fennell said some states require child car seats to be rear-facing, making it harder for drivers to see children in the back seat. There are a variety of factors that can lead to tragedies like this, he said.
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The Jones family with “Charlie” (center), who died after being left in his father’s truck for four hours. (offered)
“The biggest mistake anyone can make is thinking it won’t happen to them or their family, because we work very closely with these families and many of them will admit to us that they thought that before it happened to them,” Fennell said.
“This isn’t about good or bad parenting, it’s like a Swiss cheese model with all kinds of holes lining up perfectly at the wrong time.”
Angela says Charlie was the heart and soul of their young family and they will miss him deeply.
“She was our sassy girl, our little sissy who always made funny faces,” Jones said. “She was just the light of our family. We talk about her all the time. We try to cherish her memory.”
Angela says what happened to their family could easily happen to other families, so she has made it her mission to educate parents about the risks and help them come up with preventative measures to stop the same thing from happening to them.
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The child is sitting in the car seat. (Child and car safety)
“I made it my mission to spread awareness and share our story. That really helped me get through it all, because I never thought this would happen to us.”
“And I’ve learned over the years and from talking to other families that people make a lot of judgments and they think, ‘Oh my goodness, how can a parent forget their child? How can that happen? They must be bad parents or they must be addicted or neglectful or something.'”
“And that’s obviously not true. We did everything we could to protect our children, but we just didn’t realize this was a risk until it happened to us,” Jones said.
“So I share my story because we are normal, loving parents. I just want it to inspire others so they can create alternatives and take action. This is a preventable tragedy and there are steps that can be taken to stop it.”
Jones said he had been working with Kids and Car Safety to warn people about pitfalls and promote new vehicle technology.
The group has called for federal regulation to require cars to have sensors that would alert drivers if someone is still inside the vehicle, though it acknowledges that even if legislation passes, it could be years before all cars are equipped with such sensors.
Charlotte Jones died in 2019 after her father accidentally left her in his truck. (offered)
Another solution, Jones says, is to put anything you might need later, like a wallet or purse, in the car seat with your child.
“If you’re going out outside of your normal schedule, we recommend making an arrangement with the daycare center where parents call the childcare provider who is dropping off or picking up their child to make sure they’ve arrived at their destination, or if a child doesn’t show up as scheduled the childcare provider will call the parents to ask if they’re OK,” Jones said.
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Jones also said car seats should be placed on the side opposite the driver’s seat so that the child can be seen when turning around – Charlie was sitting directly behind his father on the day he died.
“People forget things all the time,” Jones said. “They forget to turn off the oven, they forget to do things, their minds just run wild. And also, people are so busy these days and they’re running around so much, and kids are at school and so some of their routines get disrupted. Unfortunately, it happens.”
“And it’s completely preventable.”
