Photo: Joe Raedle/AFP/Getty Images
By: The opinion Posted Aug 22, 2023, 18:46 pm EDT
Extreme heat affecting nearly 100 million people across a large swath of the United States forced schools, outdoor workers and outdoor event organizers to adjust Tuesday, and claimed the life of a 1-year-old girl left in a Nebraska daycare van on one of the hottest days of the year.
Officers and medics were called Monday afternoon to Kidz of the Future Childcare in Omaha about an unresponsive baby inside the van, police said.
The call came as temperatures reached 90 degrees and the heat index spiked to around 110 degrees, part of a heat wave that has been raging in the central part of the country for days.
According to reports on ABC News, the girl, Ra’Miyah Worthington, was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. Her parents asked why her absence was not noticed at the nursery.
“She loved, loved, loved her family,” her mother, Sina Johnson, told television station WOWT. “She loved her dad. She was daddy’s girl.”
Prosecutors on Tuesday charged the driver of the van, 62-year-old Ryan Williams of Omaha, with of a felony child neglect resulting in death, which carries a sentence of up to four years in prison.
A bail hearing for Williams has been set for Wednesday morning.. Online court records still did not list a lawyer who could comment on his behalf, and a phone list was taken offline.
“He was responsible for bringing those children inside,” said Douglas County Chief Assistant District Attorney Brenda Beadle. “That girl was in that van for five to six hours with a temperature outside of almost 100 degrees.”
The death came as the National Weather Service on Tuesday issued heat advisories for parts of 22 states. stretching from the Midwest and the Great Plains to the Gulf Coast.
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