Alyssa Dies In Sweltering Death Trap
GREEN OAK TOWNSHIP, Mich. - Or at least that’s what Devin Scillian from Click On Detroit calls it. It was actually a car seat. 18-month old Alyssa died after being left in the family truck for 2-hours while it sat in the driveway of the family’s home.
Temperatures that day reached 88 degrees. The father was the last one to drive the truck. When the parents realized that the toddler had been left in the vehicle, they found Alyssa bundled up in a car seat behind the drivers side of the truck. When firefighters arrived on the scene, the little girl was overheated and unconscious. B0th parents, who also have a 3-year-old, are in their late 20’s and their names are being withheld. They are co-operating with investigators.
I am so sick of people saying that they “Forgot” their child was in the car!! How can you forget???? You put her in there!!! I hate these people, Drugs much????
No shit, I bet they didn’t forget their damn cell phone or other gadgets. How can you forget your child, even if they’re sleeping? Call me crazy, but when my son was little, in summer, I got him out of the seat before I carried anything else in the house. Now in the winter, I do admit, that I would take what I could carry and get the door unlocked and then take him in, so I wouldn’t be holding a baby and trying to unlock the door while it was freezing. I just wanted to run from the car to the house with him, ya know to keep him out of the cold.
New invention: a baby car alarm. Some kind of sensor that picks up heat in the cart after the engine is off. If it senses anything a loud bass voice says: HEY DUMASS YOU LEFT SOMETHING IN THE CAR. You must go out to the car to turn it off.
or better yet-NEW INVENTION-parents not being so fucking stupid!!!!
In cases like these, I always feel so bad for their parents. Yes this is an incredibly ******* stupid mistake, but the consequences for it are… Jesus, I don’t even have the words for how bad this is. I think in most of these cases the parents aren’t evil people, they never meant to hurt their kid, they may be excellent parents 99.99% of the time. One mistake can be all it takes to destroy your life. So tragic…
Deety, I have to respectfully disagree with you. It just isn’t normal to leave a small child in a car for so long. That doesn’t happen to normal, caring parents. I myself was a young mom, got pregnant at 19, ended up raising my son alone because his dad attacked me when I was 20 and went to prison (he is still there 8 years later), AND on top of that I became a drug addict (cocaine, and at one point heroin). I did so many obviously stupid things, but even in my most worst and busiest times, I cannot imagine forgetting my son somewhere. It just doesn’t happen.
Maybe these aren’t “evil” folks per say, but they are neglectful parents and I would be very worried leaving any other children in their care. You seem like a smart, caring person, and I respect your opinion, I just wanted to put my two cents in though. I think we can both agree that the person who most deserves our sympathy is poor baby Alyssa who isn’t around any more to grow up and live the life she deserves.
Deety, I have to agree with Solange. Maybe not evil, but stupid, neglectful, and probably druggies. You can’t just forget your child is in the car!!! There is no excuse for that. The child was probably sleeping and they just wanted time to themselves. No feeding or diaper changes. Jeesh, to say you feel sorry for these parents just dumbounds me, no disrespect intented to you though…..
I agree with you, researchers have shown that in 51% of these cases the child was accidentally left in the car by a caregiver. It is a very busy world and people have so much on their minds that mistakes do happen. It doesn’t automatically mean that they are “stupid, neglectful, or druggies”. It just means they are human and they can make mistakes.
I feel horrible for the parents. These people not only have to suffer the loss of their child, but the tremendous guilt for causing the death.
OK, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt about forgetting the baby in the car…for about 5 minutes…But they forgot about her for 2 hours. How do you go about your business for 2 hours and not realize sometime in between there that you haven’t seen or heard your baby? There’s no good explanation for that - not even stupidity. That’s flat-out neglect.
Exactly my point!!!
I guess my view may be colored, because the first time I heard of this happening (in the town next to mine) it was a dad who accidentally left his son in the car when he went into work. Dad didn’t usually take the boy to day care in the mornings, but there had been something unusual about that morning, so he had him in the backseat. He forgot to drop him off, and went to work as usual. Someone saw the baby two hours later, but it was too late.
These parents were both professionals, and by all accounts were devoted parents. It was just a stupid mistake with unimaginably terrible consequnces.
Anytime someone dies, I feel sorry for those left behind. Especially when the ones left behind are the parents, and most especially when they are going to carry this burden of guilt with them for the rest of their lives. If I ever did this, I would probably kill myself. I don’t think I’m a strong enough person to deal with that weight.
That doesn’t apply when the story is mom wanted to play video games with her friends, or was busy buying crack. I’m talking about normal, loving parents who made a horrific mistake.
With all due respect, that is a different situation, he wasn’t used to having the baby in the morning and went into work. These parents went home and didn’t notice their 18 month old was not around.
They didn’t check if the baby was hungry, needed a diaper change, nothing. That doesn’t sound like caring, loving parents to me. It sounds neglectful, if not intentional.
I have a lot of pet rodents, and when I need to take them to the vet, that throws off my busy and complicated schedule, too. And rodents are quite a bit smaller and easier to overlook than a human baby, even in their pet carriers in the back seat. And I have never once left a gerbil in my car. Heck, I won’t even leave the gerbs in the car for 5 minutes while I dash into the store for gerbil-doctoring supplies on the way home from the vet’s, lest they overheat–even though I live in a rural area. No, I drive all the way back to my house, make sure the ill gerbil is settled safely and comfortably back at home, and then I drive all the way back into town again to get whatever supplies the vet recommended–even with gas at $4 a gallon, I’ll make multiple trips before I leave my pets alone in my car for a second. And if I did leave one in the car, well, I still have 7 others to distract me and help camouflage the missing gerbil’s absence…and they don’t need to be fed and changed several times a day. So it would be easy to leave a gerbil in the car after a trip to the vet’s for a check-up. Yet I never have.
And, you know, as much as I love my pets…they’re not human babies. They’re not the subject of daily phone calls to grandma, and Christmas newsletters.
So I just absolutely don’t understand how a parent can forget they even have a child and leave their baby in the car for hours.
Also: I lied. The rodents are, in fact, the subject of daily phone calls and my Christmas newsletters.
Exaaaactly.
It’s not just that…checking to see if the baby needed something. Even if, say, you wanted some alone time. What parent actually gets that with an 18 month old? When mine were that age, I couldn’t have a 5 minute phone conversation, take a shower or even poop without being interrupted. If there was even a 15 minute span of silence, I knew there was trouble. Actually, although they’re 5 & 7 now, it hasn’t changed much. I just reminded myself of how much I need a vacation.
Starting to see more and more stories from Michigan; wondering what the hell is going on with the state I live in. Maybe people are starting to go nuts here, perhaps its in the water. I guess I will use that as my defense if I ever come across any of these assholes that are on DD.
I think if I had a baby and knew that people were leaving their kids to cook in cars all over the nation, I would tie a string to the child’s car seat and loop the other end so I could put it over my wrist. Kid’s in the car, string around the wrist. Get out of the car forgetting kid — string pulls tight and reminds me — baby saved.
Is that so difficult that parents can’t think of it?
I hadn’t thought of it that way, not having any kids yet. Now that you mention that, my mom couldn’t have a five minute phone conversation without being interrupted until I learned how to drive.
I still feel sorry for the parents though. What a thing to have to live with.
LOL, Leemouse.
I have to confess that I am inclined to agree with Deety.
And I invite you all to consider if it is not actually more likely for a child with two parents to be innocently forgotten than it would be for a child from a single parent family? The single parent knows she (I would have said he or she, but let’s face facts) is all there is and if the child is not constantly under her feet something is wrong. Two parents could assume the other has the child for a while at least. She knows Alyssa was last with the father and assumes he has of course brought her in from the car, - they must be off playing. He assumes Alyssa is with her mother because she usually is. I wonder if they will ever be able to forgive each other, nevermind themselves?
It may have been the case of “the baby is sleeping…she’ll be fine”.
A bad and deadly choice.
The truck is a Ford 150 extended cab 2006 or 2007, (I have one) The back door is a narrower.
Regardsless of where the child seat was placed, you could not have ignored/forgotten/overlooked the child seat in the back. The seats in the newer trucks are much higher than in the older models. This was a new feature Ford made in the trucks in 2006.
The two hour time span….just enough time for her to finish her nap and a parent see if the child is awake. I don’t believe there was intent to kill or they would have waited far longer to make sure she would not be alive.
I registered, just so I could comment. (I’m an avid reader of this site.)
I understand you may think they were letting their baby nap in the car? Is that what you’re saying they might have been thinking?
I have a 4 month old and a 3 year old. My future mother in law, when I had first moved in with her son (who is not the father of my 3 year old, but that doesn’t matter, he loves her like one of his own) took me shopping, and when we got back to her house, my daughter had just fallen asleep. Then this conversation happened:
FMIL: Just let her sleep in here. We don’t want her to wake up.
Me: You’re kidding, right?
FMIL: No, we’ll be right inside…
Me: Are you fucking retarded? I’m not letting my kid sleep in the car. A car can become very hot, even on a mild day like this. And I’m not leaving her unattended. I’ll take her inside. If she wakes up, I’ll deal. It’s not that serious.
I then proceeded to let her know that if she EVER did that to my kid, she’d be in a world of hurt, whether anything bad happened or not, because it’s just a plain dumb idea, and while she may have done it back in the day, I am the mother, and I expect my wishes be respected.
We’re actually very close now.
Sooo…letting a kid sleep in a car? Dumb. Letting a kid sleep in a car on a summer day? Moronic. I’m sure they didn’t ‘let the kid sleep in the car’. Anyone who owns a car knows how hot they can get, and to me this amounts to a shitload of stupidity. I honestly hope their guilt haunts them. Their daughter is dead because of their neglect or ignorance.