A father was officially booked for manslaughter after he left his 3-month-old child to die in a parked car.
Daniel Bryant Gray, 31, left his infant son in a parked car in the Phoenix, AZ. heat, Fox 10 News reports. The temperature outside was reportedly 100 degrees, which means interior temperatures may have been much higher.
Gray was booked at a Maricopa County jail on charges of manslaughter and child abuse.
"Police earlier said 3-month-old Jamison Dean Gray died after his father had gone to a northeast Phoenix sports bar where he worked as a kitchen manager at about noon on Wednesday to check on business," Fox 10 News reports.
Officials initially stated the man was distracted and forget about the boy in his car. However, upon further investigation police found Gray was smoking marijuana with a co-worker.
First responders on the scene could not revive the baby boy.
In a blog post for AD Council in July, David Strickland, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, released a statement about the dangers of leaving a child in a car on a hot summer day.
"I work with a talented and committed staff to save lives and reduce injuries on our roadways each and every day," Strickland said in a blog for AD Council. "But all my years of safety work did not prepare me for the impact of the tragedy of young children who die or are severely injured from heatstroke when they're inadvertently left alone in a vehicle, often strapped in their car seat."
According to Strickland, 31 children in the United States died of heatstroke last year. Though the numbers are at their lowest in history, the deaths are still 100 percent preventable.
"When the thermometer hits the low 80s, the temperature inside a vehicle can reach deadly levels in only 10 minutes, even with a window rolled down two inches," Strickland said in the blog. "Temperatures inside a vehicle can climb to dangerous levels in a matter of minutes. This video reveals a series of little-known facts about heatstroke, like the fact that heatstroke can happen when outside temperatures are as low as 57 degrees, and that children's body temperatures can rise up to five times faster than that of an adult."
