1-year-old found dead in car outside Northampton County warehouse, DA says
A 1-year-old girl was found dead Thursday in her father’s vehicle parked outside a warehouse in Northampton County, according to the district attorney.
Authorities were summoned about 4:15 p.m. to the logistics facility in the 4800 block of Hanoverville Road in Lower Nazareth Township, a county 911 dispatch supervisor said.
County Coroner Zachary Lysek confirmed the child, believed to be about 15 months old, was deceased, county District Attorney Stephen Baratta told reporters at the scene.
Lysek is investigating the cause and manner of death.
No one was immediately facing charges, and authorities had not yet spoken to the father as of about 6:30 p.m., Baratta said.
“But allegedly the child had been in the car for some time,” he said, “as in all day.”
The investigation was just beginning, led by Colonial Regional police, the coroner’s office and the district attorney’s office.
A tow truck removed a blue Ford Explorer where investigators had been focused.
Baratta said he did not believe the vehicle belonged to an employee of the warehouse.
Temperatures reached 93 degrees Thursday at nearby Lehigh Valley International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. Combined with relative humidity, heat index values rose to 101 degrees. Temperatures inside hot cars can reach 20 degrees higher than external temps.
The Lehigh Valley is under a heat advisory through 8 p.m. Friday.
Although it was too early to say what happened to the girl, Baratta said parents need to be vigilant about their children’s whereabouts.
“Unfortunately, this kind of incident happens throughout the country every year,” the visibly disturbed district attorney said. “To ask parents to be vigilant with regard to their children when they have them in the car is really not any effective advice, if they don’t understand they need to be vigilant.
“My warning ... to watch your child, especially when it’s an infant and in your car is probably going to fall on deaf ears.”