At least 27 children have died so far this year after being left alone in hot cars.
But a child who might very likely have been the 28th is alive today thanks to a heroic rescue by an ex-cop and a schoolteacher in Howell, N.J.
Sarah Mazzone, the schoolteacher, first noticed the baby in the car in a Kohl’s parking lot with the door locked and the windows closed. The temperature was soaring close to 90 degrees outside. The baby was “beet red” and “sweating profusely. She was half covered in a blanket and in a panic,” Mazzone told News12 New Jersey.
Walking in the opposite direction was Steve Eckel, a former Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department officer, whom she alerted.
“That’s when we both heard the baby screaming,” Eckel told Howell Patch’s Karen Wall.
Mazzone rushed into Kohl’s in search of help. Eckel called police. But realizing there might be no time to spare, he began asking people in the parking lot if they had a tire iron or some other tool to smash the car’s window and extract the child.
It was “well over 120 degrees,” inside the car he figured. “She was sweating, crying, eyes rolling back,” he told CBS2 New York.
That’s when he remembered he had a sledgehammer in his car that he had been using on a project. Running in his flip-flops, he retrieved it, smashed the front passenger window and took the baby out.
“Just think of what could have happened,” he told CBS2 New York. “I do believe in guardian angels, and I think I’m the one for this child,” Eckel said.
“I almost started to cry, I got really emotional at that point,” he told CBS2.
They took the baby inside the air-conditioned Kohl’s and waited for authorities to arrive.
Local police said the mother was inside the store for about 40 minutes. When she came back outside and saw the broken window and empty car seat, she started to panic.
“Oh my God, where’s my baby?'” the mother said, according to CBS 2.
An officer who had arrived said, “‘You’re the mother? Have a seat,'” Eckel said.
“In my opinion they saved the baby’s life,” Sgt. Christian Antunez, of the Howell Township Police Department, told News12 New Jersey. “Seconds could have made a difference between life and death.”
“You act like a dad,” Eckel said in a News12 interview of his reaction. “You act like a cop. Once a cop always a cop, you know what they say.”
“When I got home, I still had the (baby’s) onesie,” he told Howell Patch. “My wife asked what it was, and when she picked it up, it was still soaking wet. That’s when it really hit me.”
The infant’s mother, Karen B. Gruen, 33, of Lakewood, N.J., was arrested and charged with child endangerment, Antunez told Howell Patch’s Karen Wall. Gruen has not commented or filed a plea yet.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Fred Barbash
