Mother to be questioned in death of boy left in car

Jace Radke

Friday, May 25, 2001 | 10:49 a.m.

North Las Vegas Police early next week expect to complete an investigation into the death of a 9-month-old boy who was left in a parked sport utility vehicle Tuesday.

Police spokesman Lt. Art Redcay said investigators need a formal statement from the mother before sending the case to the district attorney for review.

Dallas Nelson died Thursday about 12:45 p.m. at University Medical Center's pediatric intensive care unit.

The baby was left in a car seat inside an SUV parked in the driveway in the 2400 block of Bahama Point Avenue, near Simmons Street and Lone Mountain Road, about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. He was found by his mother at 2:30 p.m., police said.

The outside temperature reached 95 degrees while the baby was in the car, according to the National Weather Service.

Nelson is the second child to die this month after being locked in a car, parked under the midday sun.

Michael Esposito, 5, was reportedly playing hide-and-seek May 6 in a dirt lot behind the stands at one of the tracks at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The boy apparently hid in the trunk of his mother's car and was trapped inside about 30 minutes. The outside temperature was about 90 degrees.

Esposito died after being hospitalized for several days.

During the summer months the Las Vegas Fire Department responds to an average of one or two times a day to calls reporting that a child is locked in a car, spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

"Most are honest mistakes, and they usually end with the child being fine," Szymanski said. "Instances like what happened in North Las Vegas are few and far between, and I can only remember about four times over the past five years that we've had something like that in the valley."

In 1996 a woman forgot to drop off her 3-month-old baby at a child-care center on her way to work. The baby fell asleep, and the woman drove to work and left the baby inside the car. The mother later drove a co-worker to lunch, and she didn't notice the infant until they got back in the car to return to work.

In that case District Attorney Stewart Bell and five of his chief deputies decided the evidence in that case indicated that the child's whereabouts simply slipped the mind of a busy mother, and no charges were filed. Brad Donahue, a psychology professor at UNLV, said although he wasn't familiar with Tuesday's incident, a person with a lot on his mind could become distracted and forget.

"Stress could be one factor, and depression could be another factor that could have influenced her forgetting that the child was out there," Donahue said. "There could be a lot of factors."

Possible explanations regarding the recent tragic incidents aside, heat can be dangerous to children, the elderly and the sick, Dale Carrison, director of UMC's emergency room, said.

"We know that when these temperatures get up to 100 outside it might be 150 inside a car, and a human being can't stay in that environment," Carrison said. "You wouldn't take a shower with 150-degree water. Being in that kind of heat is essentially being in an oven.

"When this happens to a child, they just don't have the reserve to combat it." Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said the only defense for parents is being careful.

"When you get in the car you make sure that your child is strapped in, you drive more carefully, and when you get out they have to get out," Leinbach said.

Erica Johnson

contributed to this story.