Girl, 6, ‘locked in hot car by her mom’s boyfriend while he worked’ dies
A six-year-old girl died after her mother’s boyfriend allegedly left her locked in a hot car while he tended to work.
Markise Outing, 24, showed up at Southern Manatee Fire Department Station 2 in Bradenton, Florida, with the girl who was not breathing and possibly suffering cardiac arrest, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.
Outing told medics that she was his girlfriend’s child, and claimed that she over-heated while playing at a park, WWSB reported.
The girl’s body temperature was recorded at 107.2 degrees Fahrenheit and she was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead later the same evening of May 20.
A few months later, on Tuesday, Outing was arrested and charged with aggravated manslaughter.
GPS data indicated that the girl was in Outing’s car in a parking lot outside of his workplace for a few hours instead of at a park, said investigators. Outing’s account of what happened also contained inconsistencies.
Investigators found that Outing picked up the girl from school and drove to his business car park around 2.45pm.
He is accused of leaving her inside the vehicle with the windows up, with the temperature inside hitting over 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
The high in Bradenton that day was 89 degrees Fahrenheit.
She died of extreme heat, according to her autopsy. Her manner of death is pending a toxicology report.
Outing has been booked into Manatee County Jail.
At least 1,083 kids have have died in hot cars in the US from 1990 to 2023, averaging 38 deaths per year, according to an analysis by the nonprofit group Kids and Car Safety. The highest number of fatalities occurred in 2018 and 2019.
The Florida girl’s death happened less than a year after a 14-month-old girl died in a hot car in Long Island, New York, after her grandmother forgot to drop her off at a daycare center but forgot and drove straight to work, leaving her in the backseat for eight hours.
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