15-month-old dead after boiling alive in hot car for hours, mother arrested

Concepcion Rodriguez, 26, of Corpus Christi, Texas has been arrested for leaving her 15-month-old son in the back of a SUV for over three hours with temperatures inside the vehicle that reached 140 degrees. The baby, Benny, was boiled alive in his own skin.

Rodriguez is the mother of four children, and she was also watching three others on that hot Texas day when temperatures rose above 100 degrees making sitting inside any unventilated vehicle likely to be fatal. Police reports indicate that Rodriguez arrived at home following an afternoon of shopping with her entourage of children. At around 1 pm she claims she unloaded her groceries, gathered all of the children, and went inside to spend the rest of the afternoon playing, and waiting for her husband to arrive home.

She forgot to unbuckle her 15-month-old son, who was left in the car to die in the brutal heat. Rodriguez claims she heard no noises, and simply forgot about her youngest child. The oldest of her four children is seven-years-old.

It has been locally reported by kiiitv.com that it was not until 4 p.m. when her husband arrived home and noticed the child was missing that the tragic discovery was made.

The father rushed outside to find his toddler lifeless, still sitting in the car seat his mother left him in. CPR was attempted but the child was pronounced dead when paramedics arrived. They said the child had no chance of being revived.

For now the remaining Rodriguez children have been placed with relatives.

Concepcion Rodriguez has been charged with a 2nd degree felony of "injury to a child", a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Article originally published in my now discontinued column on Examiner.com on August 24, 2012.