Child dies in hot locked vehicle

Jahrion Lightfoot

The parents of an infant from Dangriga are grappling with his death tonight. The four-year-old child tragically perished on Saturday morning in the most unusual circumstances. In fact, it is believed that it is only the second death of this nature to have occurred in the country. Saturday’s scorching temperature led to the child’s death, whom unbeknown to his family, had locked himself up in a car parked in their yard. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports.

Joseph Lightfoot, Father of Deceased

“He’s my favorite son.  I gave him everything.  I don’t know how to explain it but, you know, I was here living for him, you know, back and forth to the States but I cannot live in the States because I gave all my life for him, you know.  He’s my only last kid.”

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

A desperate search for four-year-old Jahrion Lightfoot by a concerned party of his parents, sibling and other relatives, in the oppressive mid-morning heat on Saturday, proved fruitless.  That was until someone within the group decided to peer inside this parked Toyota Camry.

Joseph Lightfoot

Joseph Lightfoot

“Apparently his mom was upstairs and had no knowledge that he was [outside playing].  [She] thought that the kid was with me.  Apparently the brother came home and she asked and the brother said that he didn’t have the kid.  So what happened is she called me and when she called me I told her that I didn’t have him.”

Immediately the child’s mother, forty-six year old Joan Garcia, set out in search of him.  Accompanied by her elder son Adrian, they scoured the yard and when the infant did not turn up they expanded their pursuit.

Adrian Garza, Brother of Deceased

“She borrowed my bike and she went looking all around in the neighborhood asking for Jahrion.  Where is Jahrion?  Nobody’s seen Jahrion but there was the neighbor’s bus.  They always like, usually they would just go out and ride ‘bout with the kids noh because you know how kids and vehicle go.  Well my brother he loved cars.”

Despite his fascination with vehicles, Jahrion was not aboard the neighbor’s church bus.

Adrian Garza

Adrian Garza

“My ma came looking, she went by the seaside, went by the church because that’s a church bus, went all over, all over.”

Exhausted from combing the area, they sat on the front steps of the residence.  While there an aunt decided to look inside the vehicle which has been parked here for almost three weeks.  It was the last place they expected to find him.

Joseph Lightfoot

“That’s one day I opened the car so it could air out because of the heat, so I leaved the doors open.  So apparently he got in the car, [we] had no knowledge that he was in the car so the door was closed but like I said before the car is not operating so we didn’t expect him to be in the car.”

Adrian Garza

“My Auntie Margaret, Deonicio and my mom came and when they looked in the back of the car [they] saw my brother right there [with] foam coming out of his mouth.  So they rushed him to the hospital, about ten minutes after [he was pronounced] dead.”

Jahrion, it is believed, died as a result of a heat stroke.  Inside the vehicle are signs that he may have attempted frantically to break free of its sweltering interior.  The temperature along the coast over the weekend was brutal, hovering in the upper eighties and nineties.

Frank Tench Jr., Forecaster, National Meteorological Service

Frank Tench Jr.

“We were in a dry spell going into the weekend and the forecast for the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, we were forecasting particularly high and hot temperatures with Sunday being the hotter of the two weekend days.”

Isani Cayetano

“In cases like these where there is extreme heat, what are some of the precautionary measures that can be taken in terms of either staying cool or in terms of dealing or coping with the heat?”

Frank Tench Jr.

“We often advise the public during these dry and hot weather episodes to take extra precaution in terms of drinking lots of fluids and staying in the shade as much as possible and we also advise members of the public to pay particular attention to the elderly and the infirmed and, by extension, young children, who, probably, would not be very conscious of the conditions in which they are playing or existing in.”

Dangriga police are currently investigating this unfortunate case of sudden death. Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.

A postmortem to determine the precise cause of death is scheduled for later this week.