GILROY
– A woman was ticketed Monday at the Gilroy Premium Outlets for
leaving her 20-month-old child in the back seat of her minivan
while she shopped.
GILROY – A woman was ticketed Monday at the Gilroy Premium Outlets for leaving her 20-month-old child in the back seat of her minivan while she shopped.
Gayatri Gharia of San Jose was ticketed around 12:30 p.m. Monday after police and firefighters responded to a 911 call of a passerby who heard the baby crying in the parking lot in front of the Billabong outlet store.
Temperatures soared to 99 degrees Monday in Gilroy, and although the front windows of Gharia’s minivan were cracked open, police said temperatures likely reached 110 degrees inside the van.
By the time paramedics from the fire department responded to the call, the mother was already at the van and the child’s vital signs were healthy, according to Gilroy Fire Department Capt. Colin Martin.
Paramedics said the child had been in the car 10 to 15 minutes before his mother arrived.
“It is a very dangerous situation any time you leave a young child in the car,” said Jason Kadluboski, a corporal with the Gilroy Police Department. “We recommend to never leave a child unattended in a car, even in the winter, but on a day as hot as this, the danger is extremely high.”
The incident comes on the heels of a case in Palmdale last week where a mother left two young children unattended in a car for five hours. The children both died.
San Martin’s Brian Palmer Gilbert, 25, was sentenced to four years probation and 500 hours of community service in November for leaving his 5-month-year-old son to die in the back seat of his car on July 24, 2001. The outside temperature that day was only in the mid-80s, although experts testified that temperatures inside Gilbert’s Nissan Sentra likely rose to 120 degrees during the three hours his son was left in the car.
On Monday Gharia was given a misdemeanor ticket for child endangerment.
When the call to 911 was made Gharia was shopping with her older child, and she told police she left her 20-month-old in the car because he was not feeling well.
