Shopper's Kids in Hot Car Rescued by Crowd Concerned for Their Lives as Mom Gets Haircut
A group of shoppers in Katy, Texas, thought they needed to act quickly to spare the lives of two small children inside a hot Jeep on Monday afternoon. Their mother had left the kids inside the vehicle while she went and got her hair done.
"It was a crazy situation," Gabriel Del Valle, one of the rescuers, told WFAA News. "The kids were in there crying. I mean, you would understand – it's real hot."
People gathered around the vehicle and did whatever they could to get the kids out. One man used a hammer to shatter the glass windows so that the children could be lifted out of the vehicle. Using the doors was not an option given that not only were they locked, but a child lock was in place as well. The group eventually freed the children and found their mother.
She told the group that she had left the children inside the vehicle "temporarily" so she could get her hair cut. She pleaded with those gathered not to call the police, and they agreed, stating that anyone could make a mistake. Del Valle was not too pleased with the mother and is tired of people leaving their children inside a vehicle on a hot day, whether by mistake or not.
"Even a dog can die, so imagine a person," Del Valle said.
More and more cases of children being rescued from hot vehicles are being reported after the case of Cooper Harris, a 22-month-old who died of hyperthermia after being left inside a vehicle for seven hours. Police have charged his father with murder, believing that it was not merely an oversight that the child was left in his car seat to die.
One man went so far as to issue a challenge to parents to sit inside a hot car so they become aware of the feelings and danger of leaving a child inside. He wanted to raise awareness after Cooper's death and the deaths of 16 other children left in hot cars this year alone.
"I want to know how it feels to be left in the car, sitting in the back seat, strapped into a car seat with the windows up and doors probably locked," Terry Bartley said in the video, which has now gone viral.
Watch Bartley's video here:
