Girl, 3, dies after being found in a hot car in Southern California, and her mother is arrested

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A 3-year-old girl died after being found unconscious inside a hot car with her mother in Southern California during a heat wave marked by triple-digit temperatures, police said Monday.

The toddler was found Friday and was pronounced dead with the preliminary cause of death of suspected complications from heat stroke, pending an official autopsy report, Anaheim police said. Her mother was arrested by police, who reported finding several empty bottles of alcohol in the vehicle. She was later found to have had a blood alcohol content of nearly four times the state legal limit for driving, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors charged Sandra Hernandez-Cazares, 42, with felony involuntary manslaughter and felony child abuse causing great bodily injury. She faces a maximum sentence of 12 years for both charges.

The Orange County Public Defender’s Office could not be reached for comment.

On Friday, family members began looking for Hernandez-Cazares after staff said no one showed up to pick up her 5-year-old son from elementary school, prosecutors said. Relatives found both mother and daughter inside a locked Ford Expedition parked in front of their Anaheim apartment.

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Police and fire officials responded to a call around 4:20 p.m. Friday and found a relative had broken the window of the car to remove the daughter. The outside temperature was 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), police said.

Doctors believe that the girl had been dead for several hours before she was discovered, according to prosecutors.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department identified the child as Ily Ruiz. Her cousin, Nancy Salamanca, started a GoFundMe campaign for the girl’s father, Juan Ruiz, to cover funeral expenses.

“He’s broken, you know, Ily was his princess, his daughter, he loves his kids, that’s what he lives for,” Salamanca told KABC-TV.

Hernandez-Cazares and Juan Ruiz lost their 5-year-old and 9-year-old sons in 2012 after a drunk driver ran over their tent at a South Dakota campground during a family vacation, and they had lobbied the legislature for stronger DUI penalties, prosecutors said.

A child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s, and heatstroke begins when their temperature reaches about 104 degrees, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Last year, the agency recorded 29 child deaths from heatstroke in vehicles.