Hot Car Deaths: 1-Year-Old Baby Found Dead In Vehicle In Phoenix

An infant was found dead Saturday in a hot car in the parking lot of a church in Phoenix, Arizona, the second such death in the past two days in the city, Phoenix Fire Department officials said. The one-year-old was identified as Josiah Riggins.

Firefighters responded to a call around 3 p.m. EDT Saturday to conduct investigations regarding the death of the child in the parking lot of Free Church of God in Christ in the city's south side. According to them, the child was left in the car possibly at another location and not in the church parking lot.

Fire Capt. Larry Subervi said in a statement the incident seemed to be an accident. The mother found the child, which was immediately pronounced dead, he said, according to NBC News.

Read: Amanda Hawkins, Texas Mother Charged In Deaths Of 2 Toddlers After Leaving Them In Hot Car For 15 Hours

Police said the child’s father did not know the infant was present in the vehicle when he drove to the church to meet his wife. Police said when the father noticed the child in the backseat, he was already unresponsive. The child was declared dead when the authorities arrived to inspect the incident. Initial reports from the authorities claimed the infant was in the car for almost two hours; investigation is still underway and no arrests have been made yet.

Zettica Mitchell, who identified herself to the Arizona Republic as a cousin of the baby's father, called the death "shocking, devastating, just sad."

"You feel like it's something that could happen to anybody," she said.

On Friday, a similar incident was reported in northeast Phoenix when a 7-month-old boy was pronounced dead in the afternoon after he was found in a hot car outside a house. Witnesses told the police the child had been left in the vehicle and was found unresponsive.

"Unfortunately, we hear this, that parents forgot their baby in the vehicle," said Sgt. Mercedes Fortune with the Phoenix Police Department, CBS affiliate azfamily.com reported. "Yesterday we had another incident like this. We just ask that you take some time. Again, look inside your vehicle before you put it in drive and before you go anywhere, so you can avoid these tragedies."

In the United States, on an average 37 hot car deaths take place each year due to rise in temperature during summer and due to carelessness of parents as they forget their child is also traveling in the backseat of the car.

As per child safety organization Kids and Cars records, at least 775 children have died due to vehicular heat stroke since 1990. Eighty‐seven percent of children who died were aged three years and below, according to Kids and Cars. The records further added that 55 percent of the deaths included children aged one year and younger. It further mentioned that an infant’s body has a tendency to overheat three to five times faster than an adult’s.

Read: Arkansas Hot Car Death: 4 Employees Fired After 5-Year-Old Dies Inside Day Care Van

"On average, 37 children die from heat-related deaths after being trapped inside vehicles. Even the best of parents or caregivers can unknowingly leave a sleeping baby in a car; and the end result can be injury or even death," Kids and Cars stated on its website.

David Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, explained to NBC News the reasons why parents might forget their children in cars, leading to fatal repercussions.

"When you drive home and don’t normally take a child to daycare, when you have a habit and you are normally driving home from work — and in those subsets or maybe none at all take a child home — well, what happens in all these cases, the parent goes into autopilot mode, which is typically from home to work. It’s in that subset of cases the basal ganglia (the brain center, which operates on a subconscious level) is taking you on a route that does not include a child," Diamond said.