Los Angeles police arrested 42-year-old Sandra Hernandez-Cazares after she kept her 3-year-old daughter in a car during intense heat, leading to the child’s death.
Investigators also found empty bottles of alcohol in the car, prompting them to perform a blood test on the mother, whose blood alcohol content was found to be four times more than the legal limit.
Hernandez-Cazares now faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse and could be sentenced to 12 years in prison if convicted. The police said that the temperature reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit on the day of the tragedy.
According to the prosecutors, the woman’s family members were worried about her whereabouts when they received a call from the school of her 5-year-old son saying that nobody had come to pick up the boy from the school. They began searching for her and found her inside the Ford Expedition with her daughter near her apartment. The family called the police, and a relative broke the car window to try to save the girl.
Prosecutors also revealed that medical reports indicated the toddler had died hours before being found.
The deceased girl has been identified as Ily Elizabeth Ruiz, whose cousin, Nancy Salamanca, started a GoFundMe campaign to help her father cover her funeral expenses. The funding campaign has raised almost $24,000. Salamanca stated that Ruiz’s father is broke, and he loved her daughter.
In 2012, Hernandez-Cazares and her husband, Juan Marcus Ruiz, lost their two sons, aged 5 and 9, when a drunk driver ran over the tent they set for a family vacation in South Dakota. Since the tragedy, the couple has advocated for stricter penalties for DUI offenses.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that children’s body temperatures rise almost three to four times faster than adults, which makes them more vulnerable to heat stroke.
In 2023, 29 children died of heat stroke in vehicles. Just last month, a 10-month-old girl died in Louisiana after her mother left her in a car and went to her job. The mother claimed that her daughter had been in the car for nearly an hour and a half and that she forgot about her after going to work.
Similarly, Angela Garza-Amado of San Antonio, Texas, was arrested after leaving her three children, including a one-month-old infant, in a hot car for an hour while she went shopping.
Health experts warn that leaving children alone in a car is extremely dangerous, as a parked car can heat up by 20°F (11°C) in just 10 minutes. This rapid temperature increase can cause a child’s body temperature to rise quickly, often triggering a medical emergency.