Babysitter Charged With Manslaughter After Infant Died After Being Left In 133-Degree Car For Five Hours

A ten-month-old baby girl was found dead in a hot car after her babysitter, Rhonda Jewell, 46, left her there for five hours.

Jewell, who was the infant’s occasional babysitter, was arrested last Wednesday and charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child. The 46-year-old reportedly picked up the ten-month-old from her mother’s house around 8 a.m. and drove to another residence, where she was babysitting three other children.

Upon arrival at the other Macclenny, Florida, residence, Jewell allegedly forgot about the baby and left her in the car for five hot hours. Florida’s temperature on that day was around 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35.55 degrees Celsius), according to the National Weather Service, and the temperature inside the car the baby was found in was 133 degrees Fahrenheit (56.11 degrees Celsius).

Jewell allegedly did not realize she had left the baby inside the car until the child’s mother came by to pick her up a little after 1 p.m. Her mother, whose name is unknown, then called authorities and told them her daughter was not breathing and that her lips had turned blue.

When police arrived, they found that the baby’s skin was “very hot to touch,” and was later taken to Fraser Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Medical staff took the baby’s temperature, which resulted in 102.1 degrees Fahrenheit (38.94 degrees Celsius) externally and 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.33 degrees Celsius) internally, although, according to the staff, 110 was the maximum amount their thermometer could measure.

With details posted on the Baker County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, Sheriff Scotty Rhoden asked everyone to “respect the privacy of the victim’s family.”

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“Each of us are given the gift of life every morning we wake up and every evening when we finish our day, we are blessed if our family is safe and healthy,” Rhoden continued. “In the blink of an eye, our world can be turned upside down. Please be mindful of this when trying to understand the tragedy that took place in our small town yesterday.

Jewell’s bond has been set to $25,000 with GPS monitoring upon release.