Mother Left Baby To Die In Hot Car While She Got Her Hair Done

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A 25-year-old woman has been charged in the death of her one-year-old daughter. The woman reportedly told her hairdresser that there was ‘no rush’ and that she could ‘take your time’ while her toddler was left to die inside of a car whose temperature reached 129 degrees, prosecutors confirmed on Friday.

Dijanelle Fowler was denied bond on Friday by a judge in a DeKalb County, Georgia courtroom, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported.

The woman faces a second-degree murder charge for the death of one-year-old Skylar Fowler.

While Fowler was getting her hair braided at a local salon, her baby was locked inside of her vehicle for six hours as the heat index (a measurement which combines air temperature and humidity) went up to 150.

Police say that Dijanelle Fowler arrived for her hair appointment in Tucker, Georgia at 10.04am on June 15, and left her one-year-old daughter Skylar in the car with the air conditioning on.

However, soon after she entered the salon, the car died and baby Skylar was left to bake in the hot vehicle for a total of six hours without her mother going to check in on her once.

While inside the salon, Skylar reportedly told the hair stylist: ‘Take your time.’

She also said that there was ‘no rush’ since she had put her baby in day care.

Fowler had traveled to the area from her home in South Carolina. and she said she was in town for a job interview.

A relative Fowler had been staying with, apparently stopped by the salon while she was being braided. Fowler then told the relative that Skylar was with a friend.

Surveillance video shows Fowler returning to her car at around 4pm, at which point she didn’t call the police, but got a man at the salon’s help in restarting her car.

Police believe that at this point, Fowler’s daughter was already dead, and that she may have hidden the body from the man with clothes she had in the car.

‘Between 4 and 4:54 (p.m.) she texted the child’s godfather to say that she was going to go to an urgent care for headaches,’ a detective wrote. ‘(Fowler) also Googled about signs of seizures.’

Police believe that Fowler then drove to Emory University Hospital, where she called 911 from a parking garage around 4.54pm, reporting an unconscious woman.

Officers reported to the scene and found Fowler ‘unconscious’ and baby Skylar dead in the car.

At the time,  Captain Jerry A. Lewis of the homicide squad said that they believed Fowler had suffered a seizure, and that her daughter had died after, while trapped in the car.

But later, a medical examiner determined that the girl had been dead for much longer than that.

Police were finally able to come up with the correct timeline by reviewing the surveillance footage and Fowler’s Google searches.

In early July, investigators had enough to arrest Fowler, but she had fled town.

They say that she traveled to South Carolina, New Jersey, and Florida before turning herself into authorities on July 17.

Fowler has been charged with second-degree murder, second-degree cruelty to children as well as concealing death. She is being held without bond at the Dekalb County Jail.

Because investigators believe that Fowler did not mean to kill her daughter, she is only being charged with second-degree murder, and not first-degree murder.

According to Skylar’s obituary, she was from Charleston, South Carolina and is survived by her parents, Louis R. Williams II and Fowler.

 

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