PROVIDENCE, RI -- A one-year-old baby was left unattended in a van for about 30 minutes Friday evening in the heat while his mother went clothes shopping.
An alert passerby noticed the infant crying hysterically in his car seat, clutching a plastic dry cleaning bag in his hands, and called police, who rescued the child.
The mother, Decontee Brooks, 28, of 14 Cornplanter Row, was taken into custody and charged with driving with a suspended license and operating an unregistered motor vehicle. Detectives from the Youth Services Bureau are doing a child-neglect investigation, the police say, and the Department of Children Youth and Families has also been asked to investigate.
Shortly after 5:30 p.m. Friday, Elizabeth Delrosario, 34, of 226 Gray St., summoned police to the parking lot of the Pay Half store at 79 Eagle St. after spotting the little boy inside a blue Chrysler van. The windows were rolled up. The police say it was 90 degrees outside,with a heat index of 96.
The van was unlocked so the police took the infant out of his car seat and called rescue workers.The baby was "sweating profusely" and crying uncontrollably, the police say.
As they were removing the infant from the car, the baby's mother rushed out of the store, clutching several items of clothing and two handbags, which store employees later took back because Brooks had not yet paid for them.
Brooks told the police that she had been inside "for only a few minutes" and insisted that she was "a good mother."
Store employees estimated Brooks had been inside shopping for about 30 minutes.
Rescue workers applied several ice packs to the baby's body to cool him down and then took the child to Hasbro Children's Hospital, where his temperature was recorded at 101.6 degrees. The baby was later released to his father, who was at home at the time with three of Brooks' four other children, the oldest of whom is 13.