Woman Sees Doll Inside Car, Looks Closer and Realizes It's 8-Month-Old Trapped Inside
Jessica Kaiser and her husband were at a shopping center in Orange City, Florida, when she passed something that made her pause.
As they walked through the parking lot, she saw what looked like a doll strapped into a car seat in the back seat of a car. Surely no one could have left their child out here?
There are some dolls that look deceptively realistic: Perhaps Kaiser had that in mind when she first glanced at the car.
Just to be safe, she wanted to make sure it was just a doll and not a real child, so she got closer. But it was a real, live baby boy.
It was 93 degrees out that day, and the baby was secured in his car seat in the back of a black car. Kaiser, a mother herself, immediately began testing the door and found that it was unlocked.
She tended to the young boy while her husband called 911.
“There’s a baby in a car and we just opened the door but we don’t know where the people are whose car it is,” he said.
“And how’s the baby doing?” the woman on the other end of the line asked.
“The baby’s fine, not crying, he’s breathing. My wife’s fanning it with a… you know, a thing to make sure, just to try to keep him cool and calm.”
By the time the mother, 33-year-old Meagan Burgess, got back to the car, 24 minutes had elapsed. The car would have been well into unbearable triple digits by that time.
She was broken at the scene, sobbing and hugging Kaiser and thanking her. She said she’d forgotten her baby was in the car after she’d dropped her other kids off early.
“I work in the emergency department, like I’m a nurse and I hear these stories,” Burgess said. “I have four kids and all I say is, ‘How can that possibly ever happen?'”
“We avoided a disaster,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who was on the scene, said. “Thank the good lord for a good Samaritan by the name of Jessica Kaiser.”
“I challenge anyone to sit in the car, an adult to sit in the car, for 24 minutes at 3 o’clock in the afternoon with the sun blazing down and see what the end result would be,” he continued.
“We can’t hammer home enough how important it is for parents to stay on top of their game and understand that that little life is depending on you.”
Burgess was arrested. She has since been charged with child neglect. Thankfully a child did not lose his life for this lesson to be learned, but tragedy was narrowly avoided.
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