Broccolino said that he heard from an officer in the department's child advocacy center that the couple also has an older child. "I was told that's where there was a mix-up," Broccolino said.
According to Lorrie Walker of Safe Kids USA, a Washington-based nonprofit group specializing in preventing injuries to children, this was the 15th death of a child in a locked car this year in the U.S.
Last July, a Bowie woman was charged with reckless endangerment after forgetting that she left her 14-month old in a locked car after dropping three other children off at the mall and going shopping with a fourth. The child was discovered a few hours later and survived.
Some are not so lucky. Last summer, a man in Northern Virginia left his toddler in the family car in the parking lot of a company where he worked. He returned later that day to find the child dead. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but a judge found him not guilty.
Jana and Walker urged parents to create routines that will serve as reminders that children are in the car - especially if they are in the back seat, which is where safety experts say they should be riding, although that also tends to make it more likely that a distracted parent will forget that they're there.
Walker suggests that parents, when putting a child in a car seat, also place a briefcase or important papers on the floor in front of the child.
While it is against Maryland law to leave a child under the age of 8 unattended in a car, parents are rarely charged with anything more than reckless endangerment in most cases, as long as the child survives.
"I can't imagine that any judge can hand down any sentence that is worse than what the parents are doing to themselves," Broccolino said.
