3-year-old girl dies after being found in hot car in Southern California, her mother arrested

LOS ANGELES – A 3-year-old girl died after she was found unconscious with her mother in a hot car in Southern California during a heat wave with temperatures in the triple digits, police said Monday.

The toddler was found Friday and pronounced dead. The preliminary cause of death is suspected to be heat stroke, pending an official autopsy report, Anaheim police said. Her mother was arrested by police, who found several empty alcohol bottles in the vehicle. She was later found to have a blood alcohol content of nearly four times the legal limit for driving, prosecutors said.

The public prosecutor charged 42-year-old Sandra Hernandez-Cazares with manslaughter and child abuse with serious bodily harm. She faces a maximum sentence of 12 years for both charges.

The Orange County Public Defender’s Office could not be reached for comment.

Family members began searching for Hernandez-Cazares on Friday after staff said no one came to pick up her 5-year-old son from elementary school, prosecutors said. Relatives found the mother and daughter in a locked Ford Expedition parked outside their Anaheim apartment.

Police and firefighters responded to an emergency call on Friday at around 4:20 p.m. and found a relative who had broken the window of the car to get his daughter out. The outside temperature was 40 degrees Celsius, police said.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, doctors believe that the girl had already been dead several hours before she was discovered.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department identified the child as Ily Ruiz. Her cousin, Nancy Salamanca, started a GoFundMe campaign for the girl’s father, Juan Ruiz, to cover funeral expenses.

“He is devastated. Ily was his princess, his daughter. He loves his children, that’s what he lives for,” Salamanca told KABC-TV.

Hernandez-Cazares and Juan Ruiz lost their 5- and 9-year-old sons in 2012 when a drunk driver ran over their tent at a South Dakota campground during a family vacation. They had lobbied lawmakers for tougher penalties for driving while under the influence, prosecutors said.

A child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s, and heat stroke begins when the temperature reaches about 40 degrees, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Last year, the agency recorded 29 deaths of children from heat stroke in vehicles.