Woman arrested after leaving grandchild in sweltering car while grocery shopping

A Florida woman was arrested after allegedly leaving her 2-year-old grandchild in a sweltering car while grocery shopping, police said.

Elena Grady, 63, has been charged with child neglect with serious bodily injury after her grandson was found unattended in a sweltering car in a Publix parking lot on Tuesday.

Volusia County Sheriff’s officers responded to the store around 3 p.m. after store managers noticed a child sitting alone in a parked car, police said.

In a statement on Facebook, it said the child “appeared lethargic” in the car while the car was “parked in the blazing sun, there was no shade, the engine was not running and the windows were slightly open.”

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When the child was left in the car, the heat index showed a whopping 32 degrees outside. The toddler remained alone in the car for about 16 minutes.

“Let’s avoid a tragedy and remember NOT to leave children, pets or vulnerable adults in a hot vehicle, even for just a few minutes,” the Volusia Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook.

According to jail records, Grady was released after midnight Wednesday after posting her $3,000 bail.

Previously, a three-year-old girl had died in a scorching hot car because her father had forgotten that she was buckled into her child seat in the family driveway.

Little Charlotte Jones was on sick leave when her father, Scott, drove her and her sister to school as usual. However, when Scott returned home with his sick daughter in the back seat of the car, he forgot that she had not been left at school that morning.

Tragically, Scott logged on to work from his home office at the family’s Arizona home – where temperatures had soared to 96 degrees – and didn’t realize his beloved daughter was still in the car until his wife called four hours later to check on them. In heartbreaking detail, mother Angela recalled how her husband’s voice trailed off on the phone when he realized his mistake.

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Angela said: “All of a sudden I could hear panic in his voice,” Angela Jones told Fox News Digital. She added: “I thought at first she went into the pool or something, and then he was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t think I ever got her out of the car.’ Then he realized what had happened and he ran out into the driveway.”

Scott immediately called 911, but it was too late because his daughter had succumbed to the heat and died in the car. Janette Fennell, the founder of Kids and Car Safety, a group that collects data on child deaths in overheated cars, says about 55% of child deaths in overheated cars are due to them being unknowingly left in the car.