5-Year-Old Dies in Daycare Van After Being Left for Eight Hours
5-year-old Christopher Gardner Jr. died on Monday after being left inside a van all day in West Memphis, Arkansas. Investigations are currently underway.
Gardner was picked up by a van and driven to Ascent Children's Health Services facility, which the young boy had been going to ever since he was a year old. However, he was left inside the van in the heat and was found dead more than eight hours later.
According to WMC Action News 5, Gardner's mother said her son was picked up at around 6:30 a.m. and arrived at the facility at 7:15 a.m.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"You can see that my great grandbaby suffered in that van. That wasn't right," Gardner's great grandmother, Carrie Smith, told WMC.
It is unknown why or how Gardner was left inside the vehicle while the other children went into the facility. Two adults are apparently required to accompany the children in the van at all times, a former employee told the news station.
"Something was distracting them to not see him on that van all day," the former employee said, as she explained that the van would always be checked three times to make sure this type of thing does not happen.
"They didn't get off their, excuse my language, off their a-- and look. I'm very upset about it," Smith said. "They didn't look, and they can't tell me they looked. They didn't."
The heat inside the van reportedly went up to at least 141 degrees, investigators said. Both the West Memphis Police Department and the Arkansas Department of Human Services are currently looking into the tragic incident.
According to a report from FOX13, the van apparently had a security alarm system, though it remains to be seen if it was functional on Monday. An investigation into the matter is still being conducted.
"At this point we're just starting this investigation, and I'm really not allowed to have comments at this point other than we're gathering information," an investigator told the news station.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Ascent Children's Health Services recently gave a statement and said four employees have been fired because of the incident.
