While many continue to mourn the death of Myles Hill who was accidentially left behind to die in a hot van in Orlando, shocking details have surfaced in Texas where a mother has admitted to keeping her children in a hot car “to teach them a lesson.” That lesson proved deadly for her children, two-year-old Juliet Ramirez and her 1-year-old brother, Cavanaugh Ramirez.
According to police in Parker County, Texas, Cynthia Randolph initially claimed the children locked themselves inside her vehicle, forcing her to break a window in an attempt to save them. However, according to her arrest affidavit, Randolph changed her story, saying that she had found her children playing in the vehicle and left them inside after her daughter refused to leave. Randolph “shut the car door to teach her daughter a ‘lesson,’ thinking, ‘she could get herself and her brother out of the car when ready.’ According to the affidavit, Randolph “told investigators she went into her home, smoked marijuana and went to sleep for two to three hours.” According to the affidavit, Randolph also admitted to breaking the car window to “make it look like an accident.” The children were found non-responsive in the car and declared dead a short time later.
In that time, the children likely succumbed to the heat. Outdoor temperatures the day they died were in the mid 90’s and the temperature inside the car was likely hotter than 135 degrees. Young children, whose bodies can overheat 3-5 times faster than adults, can suffer serious brain injury or death after just minutes of sitting in a hot car, according to KidsAndCars.org, a website that provides information and news on these unfortunate heat-related deaths of children.
According to the website NoHeatStroke.org, 33 children died in the US just this year by being left behind in a hot vehicle.
The medical examiner responsible for the Randolph case recently determined that that the childrens deaths were “homicides as a result of heatstroke.”
