A Florida family is living through an unimaginable tragedy after an 18-month-old boy was found dead inside a hot car outside his daycare.
Police said first responders were called to A World of Discovery Academy in Plantation, Florida, on Monday around 5:30 p.m. after receiving a report of a child dead inside a vehicle.
When Plantation Fire Department crews arrived, they confirmed the toddler had died.
According to Leslie Novoa, the daycare’s director and owner, the boy’s father was supposed to drop him off at the bilingual early education center that morning. But Novoa told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the father apparently forgot his son was still in the car and went to work.
Hours later, the father returned to the daycare to pick up his child — only to realize the boy had never been dropped off.
Novoa said she opened the back door of the father’s car and found the toddler in the back seat. She immediately called 911.
“This is a tragedy that happened to them and to all of us,” Novoa told the outlet, describing the child and his parents as a “wonderful family.”
Plantation police said they have opened a death investigation.
The heartbreaking incident unfolded on a brutally hot day in South Florida. Temperatures in Plantation reached 94 degrees Monday, with the heat index climbing to a sweltering 102 degrees, according to AccuWeather.
The boy’s death is now the third hot car-related child death reported in Florida this year.
On June 20, a 3-year-old boy died in Hillsborough County after being unknowingly left inside a hot car by his father, WFLA reported. Deputies said the father later found the child unresponsive in a vehicle parked outside the family’s home. That case remains under investigation.
About two weeks before that, another 18-month-old boy, Sebastian, died after police said his father, 33-year-old Scott Allen Gardner, left him locked inside a truck for more than three hours in Ormond Beach while temperatures climbed into the 90s.
Authorities said Gardner allegedly stopped at a barbershop and then a lounge before the child was found. Police later said he gave investigators multiple false accounts of what happened before his arrest.
Since 1990, more than 1,100 children have died in hot cars across the United States, according to Kids and Car Safety. The group says 88% of those deaths involved children age 3 or younger.
On average, about 40 children die each year from heatstroke inside vehicles. Thousands more have survived with injuries.
Florida has seen 123 child hot car deaths from 1990 to 2024.
Safety experts warn that a parked vehicle can become deadly within minutes. Even when windows are cracked, the temperature inside a car can soar to 125 degrees, trapping children in a life-threatening heat chamber before anyone realizes something is wrong.
what an idiot