An adorable 4-year-old Georgia boy is dead after he entered a car on his own and became trapped inside the scorching hot vehicle.
The Candler County Sheriff’s office said they were called to the Summer Trace Apartments in downtown Atlanta after Kameron Jamel Williams was reported missing by family members at around 1 p.m. on Sunday, WTOC reported.
Sheriff’s officers, with the help of the Metter Police and the 4-year-old’s family, searched rigorously in the sweltering 91-degree heat in hopes of finding the missing youngster.
However, the boy was found dead inside the passenger area of a hot car in the apartment complex’s parking lot during the search and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Candler County coroner confirmed that when the boy was found, he was beyond help.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) stated that a preliminary investigation revealed the 4-year-old left his apartment to play outside. A nearby camera shows someone, believed to be Williams, climbing into a car but never getting back out.
The boy’s body was taken to the GBI Coastal Crime Lab Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy to determine his official cause of death.
Metter’s Police Department Captain McKinley Lewis said that no foul play is suspected at this time, but the case remains under active investigation.
From 1990 to 2023, 55 children have died in Georgia in hot cars, according to statistics provided by the Kids and Car Safety organization.
Since 1990, more than 1,100 children have died in hot cars in the United States, with 88% of the deaths nationwide being children 3 years old or younger.
On average, 40 children die each year from heatstroke inside a vehicle across the nation.
At least another 7,500 kids have survived with varying degrees of injury.
The director of the Kids and Car Safety organization, Amber Rollins, said that around 55% of the deaths that happen each year are a result of the child entering the car alone.
“Children who get into cars on their own are typically about 18 months to 4- or 5 years old. About 68% of those children who get in on their own and can’t get back out are little boys,” Rollins told WTOC.
“So, this situation meets the typical profile for that type of situation.”
Texas and Florida are the two states that have the highest number of child deaths due to vehicular heatstroke in the US, with 150 and 120 reported deaths since 1990, followed by California, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee, according to statistics.
In New York, 16 children have died in hot cars from 1990 to 2023.
Kids and Car Safety warns that cars will experience the “Greenhouse Effect” when outside temperatures exceed 80 degrees.
Even when the windows of a vehicle are cracked, it does not help slow down or decrease the heating process, and temperatures inside a car can reach 125 degrees in minutes.
The organization states that children have died in cars when the outside temperature is as low as 60 degrees, since children’s internal core temperature overheats 3-5 times faster than adults.
To help prevent putting children at risk, the organization recommends ensuring a car is always locked, even in driveways or garages, so kids can’t get inside when it’s not in use.
Additionally, it suggests asking home visitors, childcare providers, and neighbors to do the same.
It’s also important to create visual cues, like moving the child’s toy or diaper bag to the front passenger seat or a note in the front to alert the driver to reminder to check the back seat before exiting and to teach toddlers how to honk the horn of a car if they become trapped inside.
