A Texas Mom Was Arrested for Leaving Her Three Kids, Ages 4, 2, and 1, in a Hot Car While She Went Shopping
A woman in San Antonio, Texas, saw her three kids in a hot car while she was shopping and called the police. The mother was arrested and charged with three counts of child abuse.
On June 28, Angela Garza–Amador was arrested after the San Antonio Police Department said she left her four-, two-, and one-month-old children alone while she went shopping for almost an hour. CNN, KENS 5, and a local NBC affiliate all covered this.
In a separate interview with KENS 5, the woman who found the kids and filmed some of what happened after she got help said that it happened around 2 p.m. local time when she saw a 4-year-old boy sitting in a car next to her in the parking lot of a shopping center.
She told the news outlet that she saw the car was turned off and that there was a 2-year-old girl in it. After getting out of the car, she unlocked the front door and ran into the store to get help, even calling 911.
“The boy was crying and sweating a lot,” she told KENS. “It looked like he was gasping for air; I thought they were already there.”
Finally, a group of people got the kids out of the car and found the one-month-old baby as well. The store worker told KENS 5 that the mother then left as the cops arrived. According to the mother of the children, “she had the keys with her and said the car was on. She said, ‘I left it on with my esposo, my esposo,'”
When PEOPLE asked the San Antonio Police Department for more information on Saturday, they didn’t answer right away.
KENS 5 said it was 97 degrees when the kids were found after being left in the car for almost an hour. CNN also talked to the police, who confirmed how long the kids had been in the car.
Police told CNN that the mother of the children who were there said she went into a store and didn’t know how long she had been gone. “The kids were in the car for about 50 minutes, according to the information we have”
CNN reports that Garza-Amador was arrested and charged with three counts of leaving or endangering a child. According to a preliminary police report, all three of the children were scheduled to be released from a nearby hospital the same day.
According to the law, investigation details must be kept secret. However, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services told the outlet that there was no open case regarding this family when the report of the event came in. “The kids were not taken in by CPS; instead, they were given to family.”
A woman, whose name has been changed, saw the kids in the car and recorded her meeting with them. She then gave the video to KENS. On the video, the oldest boy was coughing and breathing hard as the good Samaritan asked him if he needed water. Other people then stepped in to help.
“Because I live across town, I hadn’t been to that store in ten years.” “I really believe that God sent me over there to help those kids,” the woman said. “I pray that they get the help they need and that she learns from this too.”
Since then, Garza-Amador is said to have been freed on bond, which was set at $25,000.
Just a few days before, a mother from North Carolina was charged with murder after her 8-year-old daughter died after being “left in a vehicle in hot weather conditions.”
At the time, the nonprofit Kids and Car Safety said that five people had died in hot cars in the U.S. this year. Since then, seven children have died in Georgia and Houston, Texas, bringing the total to seven.