This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A Layton infant left in a sweltering car for two hours this week remains in critical condition and likely has a difficult recovery ahead if he survives.
Given the length of time the boy spent in the vehicle and the scorching temperatures inside the car, it's remarkable the 5-month-old boy didn't die in Tuesday's incident, said Jan Null, a meteorologist and adjunct professor at San Francisco State University who studies the trend of hyperthermia deaths of children in vehicles.
"That amount of time on a 90-degree day, temperatures after the first hour are going to be at 130 degrees in the car," Null said.
"I'm surprised the child did not die. Maybe the child was well-hydrated. There's a lot of variables that we don't know."
Police say the infant's mother forgot her son was in the car when she parked outside a friend's house about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. She discovered him in the car about two hours later and took him to the hospital.
The boy was in critical condition Wednesday, said Layton Police Department Lt. Garret Atkin.
The name of the boy and the name of his mother were not released.
The vehicle was parked in a driveway in direct sunlight. Null said body cells and organs start dying at about 107 degrees. In researching cases where children are left in hot cars, he has noticed that many suffer brain damage if they survive the incident.
That was the case of 14-month-old Nicholas McCorkel, who died Saturday in Philadelphia, five days after he was accidentally left in a car by his grandfather for four hours in 98-degree weather, Null said. The boy made it through hours in a hot car, but his injuries were too extensive and his family elected to take him off life support, he said.
Craig Shane, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at LDS Hospital, said heat stroke takes effect at 104 degree core body temperature, when symptoms of central nervous system problems appear. Heat illness can cause a wide spectrum of problems, including seizures, coma, low blood pressure and organ failure, he said.
Nationwide there have been eight deaths of children left in hot cars in 2008, including the April 28 death of 18-month-old Myles Gailey in Kearns. In that incident, the toddler's mother returned to her Kearns home from a trip to the grocery store and left her son in the back of the vehicle. Three hours later, she remembered the boy was in the car.
Paramedics arrived at the home and pronounced the boy dead. Temperatures outside the day of Gailey's death hovered around 80 degrees.
No charges were filed against Gailey's mother. Atkin said whether charges will be filed against the Layton infant's mother will depend on the child's recovery.
* April 28, Kearns: 18-month-old Myles Gailey, of Kearns, died after being left in a hot car. The toddler's mother returned to her home from a trip to the grocery store and left her son in the back of the vehicle. She discovered she had forgotten the boy in the car about three hours later.
* May 11, Salt Lake City: A store security guard spotted a 2-year-old left in a warm vehicle in the Sears parking lot in Salt Lake City. The guard broke the car window and pulled out the boy, who was believed to have been in the car for about an hour. The boy survived.