NEW DETAILS: Mother meant to drop daughter off at day care before hot-car death

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Police have released new details about what happened to the toddler left in her mother’s car on Tuesday. 

A probable cause statement from the Corpus Christi Police Department describes the moment the child was taken into a trauma room at Driscoll Children’s Hospital before she was pronounced dead at 1:53 p.m. 

The document states that Hilda Adame told officers she meant to drop her daughter off at a day care on Kostoryz Road earlier that morning but forgot. 

The 22-month-old was asleep in the car when Adame arrived at the middle school at 8 a.m. She later found her in the backseat at around 1 p.m. 

She then took the child inside the school into the nurse’s office where they began to perform CPR until officers and medics arrived.

Hilda Ann Adame was arrested in connection with the death of her 22-month-old child who Corpus Christi Police Department officers say she left inside a hot car Tuesday. 

Adame is being charged with serious bodily injury to a child and child endangerment/abandonment with imminent bodily injury.

The child was left in a vehicle in the Tom Browne Middle School parking lot, Corpus Christi Police Department officers said. Officers were called at 1:29 p.m., and they were being given CPR by the school’s nurse when police arrived.

She was transported from the school to the main police station for interviewing.

It is unknown how long the child was in the vehicle, or whether the vehicle belongs to a CCISD employee or contractor.

CCISD Chief Communications Officer Leanne Libby released a statement addressing the death late Tuesday afternoon.

Corpus Christi ISD and school officials are aware of a young child being found in a hot car Tuesday at Tom Browne Middle School. We want to express our gratitude to those who swiftly responded upon learning of this crisis, including school staff as well as district police and local law enforcement.

As this is an active investigation, we refer all inquiries to the Corpus Christi Police Department.

Counseling was available on campus Tuesday afternoon, and the district’s crisis counseling team will be onsite on Wednesday. We ask for privacy for our staff and students as we work to continue school routines, which can be of comfort during a crisis.

We also want to take this opportunity to ask for kindness and compassion for all involved, especially the child’s family. We appreciate everyone’s continued support and care for the CCISD community.

So far in 2024, 24 children have died as a result of being left in hot cars, with one of those deaths in Houston on July 3. Two more cases are pending cause of death. 

“Heat is something that can take hold very very quickly,” said Janette Fennell who is the president of the organization, Kids and Car Safety.

The organization recently displayed almost 1,100 onesies in Washington DC, which represented each child that has died in a hot car in the US since 1990.

Texas has had the most deaths overall from 1990-2023 with 156 deaths; Florida was second with 118 and California was third with 65.

“I don’t know if people understand in the first ten minutes the temperature in a vehicle can rise as much as 20 degrees. In fact that is the fastest heat rise you are going to get in the very beginning,” she said.

Fennell has helped pushed for safety changes to vehicles over the decades from the installation of interior trunk releases to safer power window switches. 

Most recently the organization helped push for technology that can detect if someone has been left in a car.

“It can make the car beep, it can make the headlights flash, it could push a message to your cell phone,” she said. “Its been a fight, finally got the provision passed, now waiting for the government to get the job done, will be added to vehicles,” she said.

She also said education is a big part to prevention.

“The biggest problem we have is that nobody thinks it will happen to them until it happens to them,” she said.

The safest thing to do is look before you lock.

“To force you into that habit you can put something in the backseat, your cell phone, lunch, employee badge, computer, help with the habit,” she said.

Digital content producers Emily Salazar and Mia Valdez contributed to this developing story. 3NEWS will provide updates as they become available.

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