A 19-year-old Texan woman allegedly left her two daughters to die inside her hot car while she spent the night partying at a friend’s house.
Last Tuesday evening, Amanda Hawkins locked toddlers Brynn, one, and Addyson, two, inside her vehicle for 15 hours with no food and no water, KSAT-TV reports.
Partygoers reportedly expressed their concerns to the mother after hearing the girls’ distressed cries, but she refused to bring them inside, instead saying: “No, they’re fine. They’ll cry themselves to sleep”.
Via: Fox News
The sisters, “pretty well unconscious” by this point, were only removed from the vehicle at around noon the following day, when outside temperatures had reached a dangerous 26 degrees.
It is reported that they were brought inside the house where the mother tried to bathe them and change their clothes.
When friends finally convinced Hawkins to take her daughters to hospital a full day later, she complied, but lied about the cause of their condition.
She allegedly told medical staff the girls had collapsed after smelling flowers in a local park.
Via: GoFundMe
Tragically, doctors were unable to save the girls and they were taken off ventilators mere hours after being admitted.
The Daily Mail reports police investigated her claims before she confessed to leaving her daughters in the vehicle.
She was arrested and charged with two counts of abandoning or endangering a child, but her charges could be upgraded following their deaths.
Via: Facebook
A friend of Hawkins tells KSAT that she’d noticed her friend’s treatment to her daughters, but hesitated calling Child Services. Now, she tells the network of her regret in not doing so.
“I guess I just hesitated for so long. I didn’t want her kids to be in the system, but I didn’t know they would die if they didn’t,” she says.
“If anyone feels something’s not right, they need to call [Child Protective Servies], because you don’t want two kids to die. It’s just not fair.”
It can take just 15 minutes in an overheated car for a child to suffer life-threatening kidney or brain injuries. When the body reaches 40 degrees, organs can shut down and at 41.6 degrees a person can die.
When the outside temperature is 26-37 degrees, a car parked in direct sunlight can quickly climb to 54-77 degrees, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
