A baby is now in temporary custody of a relative, after she was rescued from a hot car by a Walmart employee last week, police said.
Spartanburg police said they responded to a 911 call at the Dorman Center Walmart last week.
They said that a woman heard a baby crying after she got out of her car with her children. When she looked over, she saw a 6 month-old girl inside a Dodge van. Police said that the van was off with all of the windows up.
The woman told police that she tried to open the van doors, but they were closed and locked. That’s when she ran into the store looking for a Walmart employee, while her husband stayed at the van.
Police said that when Matthew Stevens, the store manager, got to the van, he noticed that the little girl was covered in sweat and she was shaking.
The store’s co-manager, Bryan Hayes, struck and broke the driver’s-side back seat window, but was unable to get the door open. He then started to strike and break the rear second-row window, police said.
Stevens was able to reach in and unlock the child’s car seat and remove her from the van. He told police that the car seat was soaked in sweat. The child was not injured by the broken glass, police said.
The child was then taken to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center and is expected to be OK, police said.
The baby’s father told police that while he was at home, he was supposed to take the girl out of the van and into the house so his mother could watch her while he and the child’s mother ran errands.
He got distracted and forgot to get the child out of the van, police said. He said he did make it into the house, but shortly came back out and left to go to the store, unaware the child was still in the van.
As the man was coming out of the Walmart, he was told that his little girl had been left in the car, police said.
“What baby and in what car?” said the man.
He realized that it was his little girl in the car and rushed over to his van, asking the witnesses about the whereabouts of his child, police said.
The man said he had been up since 1 a.m. caring for the child, been to an appointment and hadn’t had any sleep since then.
The baby was checked out and found to be uninjured and was then released into her mother’s custody. It was reportedly 74 degrees at the time the child was found.
The couple’s other three kids were placed in the temporary custody of their aunt and a judge denied warrants in the case, pending the outcome of a Department of Social Services investigation.