Amherst mother accused of leaving four children in hot van while shopping
An Amherst mother faces charges after she allegedly left four young children alone in her minivan on a sweltering Monday afternoon while she shopped at a Transit Road Target store, Amherst police reported.
Tiffany Adams, 32, was charged with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child and released pending a Town Court appearance.
Adams went to the Target store on Transit, near Maple Road, about noon. An alert customer saw the children and notified Target employees, who contacted Amherst police.
“She said she thought she was only inside for a minute,” said Lt. Paul Fels, adding that it was, in fact, at least 14 minutes. She was met by patrol officers in the parking lot. Only the rear side windows of the van were cracked open, police said.
All of the children — who ranged in age from 1 to 5 — were sweating and two were crying, Fels said. All were taken to Women and Children’s Hospital for evaluation. None seems to have had significant injury.
The outside temperature was 87 degrees while the children were in the minivan, police said.
“A child or adult left in a vehicle under those circumstances could be subject to dehydration, heat exhaustion or heat stroke,” Fels said. “All three are dangerous situations.”
Although the car was likely parked only between 15 and 30 minutes, the temperatures inside the cabin of the van were believed to be over 100 degrees, according to estimates by Jan Null, a professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University who published an extensive national study on the subject.
Null’s findings suggest that temperatures rise an average of 19 degrees above outside air temperature after 10 minutes, 29 degrees after 20 minutes and 34 degrees after 30 minutes. That would make the estimated temperature in Adams’ vehicle at least 106 degrees.
“That’s lethal for small children,” Null said Monday by telephone from his San Francisco office.
Last August, 5-month-old Brayden Brol died in Arcade after his mother forgot to drop her son off at his day care facility on her way to work and left him inside the family’s sport utility vehicle for more than eight hours on a 90-plus degree day.
Brayden’s mother, Lynn, was not charged in the incident.
Fourteen states have laws prohibiting leaving children unattended in a vehicle. Nine others, including New York, have proposed legislation to criminalize the act.
