A 25-year-old mother, Dijanelle Fowler, who left her one-year-old baby daughter in a car while she got her hair done for six hours has been charged with second-degree murder.
Dijanelle, from Georgia in the USA who arrived for her hair appointment at 10.06am on June 15 also faces charges of cruelty to children and concealing a death.
According to the police, there was no sign she intended to harm the baby and had put her air conditioning on in the car, leaving daughter Skylar in the back seat. But the car’s battery reportedly died sometime after, switching off the air con and leaving the little girl in the vehicle with rising temperatures on the hottest day of the month.
CCTV allegedly shows the mum, who had spent six hours inside without coming out to check on the baby even once returning to her car at around 4 pm and asking a man from the salon with help starting her car.
DeKalb County Police believe that Skylar was already dead at this point and that her mother may have hidden the body from the man’s eyes using some clothes.
A police spokeswoman said that between 4 and 4.54pm, Fowler sent a text message to the baby’s godfather and told him she was going to go to an urgent care center for headaches. She also reportedly searched online for signs of seizures.
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The temperature in Georgia on the day the incident happened was around 92 degrees Fahrenheit – or around 32 Celsius. Temperatures inside vehicles on such a hot day can climb higher.
Fowler was charged on Monday after turning herself in to police.