Gbemisola Akayinode, Texas mother charged with felony murder in the hot car death of her 9 year old daughter, Oluwasikemi Akayinode. Mother had drawn up shades so no one could see girl inside car while she worked shift at Galena Park manufacturing plant.
A Texas mother is accused of causing her 9 year old daughter’s hot car death after leaving the girl inside a hot car all day while drawing up the shades so no one could see inside.
Gbemisola Akayinode, 36, was arrested on October 17 and booked into the Harris County Jail in the Houston metropolitan area for the death of her daughter, Oluwasikemi Akayinode.
Mom had left shade up in front of car obscuring presence of 9 year old girl inside hot car
The mother’s arrest follows her earlier in the summer arriving to her place of work at a manufacturing plant in Galena Park on Mayo Shell Road with her daughter in the back seat on July 1.
Arresting documents which ruled the girl’s death a homicide stated the mother parking her Toyota Camry circa 6 am, while leaving her nine-year-old inside with some water and the windows partially down, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.
The sheriff said Akayinode had also left a shade up in the front window of the car, making it difficult for passersby to see inside.
When the mother came to check on Oluwasikemi around 2pm after a full shift, she found the little girl unresponsive and called the police.
CPR was started on Oluwasikemi, who was then taken to nearby Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital where she was pronounced dead. The medical examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide as a result of hyperthermia.
Preventing child hot car deaths
The mother has since been charged with felony murder in the death of her 9 year old daughter.
Not immediately clear is how often the mother had brought the girl to work in the past and whether her place of work offered child daycare resources or if such resources were available to the mother in her community or family setting and if so, why she declined them.
The temperature in the area on the day the 9 year old died reached 96F, according to AccuWeather. A satellite view of the manufacturing plant shows that the parking lot has little shade.
According to a hot car calculator, temperatures inside the vehicle under the conditions that day could have reached 164F.
Within just 40 minutes, the car could have reached about 115F, and the child’s body temperature could have reached close to 106F after less than three hours. She was in the car for at least eight hours.
Explained Dr. Anthony Arredondo of Texas Children’s Hospital via KHOU11: ‘Once you start getting to a body core temperature higher than 102, 104, or higher, that can cause significant damage to the brain, organs. So it’s hard to say what time frame, the longer they are in there, the worse it is.’
Car temperatures can climb by 19 degrees in just 10 minutes. Suffering heatstroke in a car is the second-leading cause of vehicle-related deaths in children under 15 after car crashes.
According to the Kids and Car Safety National Database, Texas is the state with the highest number of hot car deaths recorded since 1990, at 160 total cases. That is significantly higher than the state with the second highest number of cases, which is Florida with a total of 122 hot car deaths.
