A three-year-old boy died after being left in a hot car for nearly three hours in Columbus, Georgia, Sunday, according to a county coroner’s office.
The boy, Kendrick Engram, Jr., had arrived home with his grandmother and several other children at approximately 5:30 p.m., following an afternoon of them attending church and running errands, according to information obtained by the Muscogee County Coroner’s Office as part of its report on the child’s death.
The grandmother told investigators she believed all the children got out of her SUV when they made it home, the coroner’s report stated, and she then went to her bedroom. Kendrick’s mother was at work at the time and had met with the group at a nearby Walmart earlier during her lunch break, the report said.
Nearly three hours later at around 8:15 p.m., Kendrick’s uncle used the SUV to drive to a Wendy’s restaurant and was unaware the boy was in the back seat, according to the report. He parked the vehicle and went inside, where he later received a phone call from Kendrick’s grandmother asking if he had seen him.
The uncle found Kendrick in the car with “foam and blood coming from his mouth” and called for emergency medical assistance, which arrived two minutes after the call, the report said.
Kendrick was described as “extremely hot to the touch” at the scene, the report said, and showed no signs of life.
The preliminary cause of death is asphyxiation, Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Bryan told CNN. Temperatures in the Columbus area Sunday reached as high as 96 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.
Due to the circumstances of the child’s death, the coroner’s office said his body would be sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to have an autopsy performed. The results of the autopsy may take up to four to five months to complete, Bryan said.
CNN has reached out to the Columbus Police Department for further information.
This is the sixth heat-related death of a child in a car this year, according to National Safety Council.
On average, 38 children under the age of 15 die from heatstroke each year after being left in a car, according to the council.
Last week in Texas, a 5-year-old boy died after he was left inside a car outside the family’s Houston home, CNN reported.
And in Virginia Tuesday, an 18-month-old boy died after he was left in an unattended vehicle for several hours, Chesterfield County police said.
Police did not specify the cause of death for the toddler, but the high temperature in Midlothian, which is about 20 miles west of Richmond, was around 81 degrees Fahrenheit that day.
