A three-year-old boy was found dead inside a roasting hot car after his father abandoned him to go shopping.
The child died inside an SUV in the parking lot of a supermarket in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on Tuesday when his father stopped there after work.
The Kalamazoo County Sherriff’s Office is treating the death as a heat-related incident.
Officers are investigating how exactly the three-year-old died and how long the car was in the parking lot for.
Although the County Sherriff’s office was not able to give any further details, it believes the incident started at a different location, News Channel 3 has reported.
Temperatures in Vicksburg, a village in Kalamazoo County where the death took place, reached the mid-80s on Tuesday.
If confirmed, this would be the first heat-related child death in a car in Michigan this year, according to Kids and Car Safety, a national children’s safety advocacy group.
It is currently unclear if prosecutors plan to pursue criminal charges against the boy’s father at this time and the investigation is ongoing.
The death comes after shocking police bodycam footage captured the moment first responders frantically tried to save a two-year-old girl left in a scorching hot car by her father for three hours.
Christopher Scholtes, an Arizona dad, can be seen holding his head in anguish and crying out to cops before he drops to his knees in video footage obtained by Inside Edition.
Scholtes, 37, faced charges in court last Thursday of first degree murder leveled by a grand jury after originally being arrested on a lesser charge of second degree murder. He pleaded not guilty.
‘Please baby, please …’ he can be heard pleading in the video.
‘I can’t believe this,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh my god.’
His little girl was found unresponsive in his vehicle outside his home in Marana, Arizona, after he allegedly left her there while he indulged in a PlayStation gaming session.
In the harrowing video, police and paramedics are seen desperately attempting to revive the toddler as Scholtes is seen pacing around his house in a panic.
Scholtes’ other children, aged five and nine, told police that he spent the afternoon playing video games, and investigators said neighborhood surveillance showed Parker may have been left for over three hours while temperatures reached 109F.
Scholtes told investigators that his daughter had been asleep in the car, and not wanting to wake her, he left the engine running with the air conditioning on.
However, police said that Scholtes allegedly ‘got distracted by playing his Game and putting his food away.’