HOUSTON, Texas — The sun was still out around 6:30 Wednesday night when police were called to an apartment complex on Hollister Road in northwest Houston regarding an unresponsive four-year-old in a pickup truck.
"That female was transported to the hospital and is, unfortunately, deceased at the hospital,” HPD Lt. Larry Crowson said.
Police believe there may have been a miscommunication between two adult women as they went into an apartment with multiple children and didn't realize the girl was still in the truck until it was too late. HPD didn't say how long the little girl had been there.
"In this type of weather, it doesn’t take a few minutes to cause very serious illness or death for someone that’s left in a car," Crowson said.
One neighbor who has a child of her own told us Thursday that hearing the news made her sick.
I don’t know what’s going on in the minds of these people when they do these things," she said. "I don’t know if it’s because they forget.”
Advocates said it doesn’t take long in the Texas heat. It was very hot with highs in the 90s and very humid on Wednesday.
"Your state leads the country by a pretty large margin when it comes to these tragedies,” said Kids and Cars Safety Director Amber Rollins.
The non-profit tracks hot car deaths and its website shows 156 in Texas from 1990 to 2023.
RELATED: 4-year-old girl dead after being left unattended in hot pickup truck in northwest Houston, HPD says
Florida is number two with 118.
"A vehicle is a greenhouse," said Rollins. "It lets that sunlight come in through the windows, that solar heat. It heats up very quickly, you know, in a very short amount of time. In fact, the majority of the increase happens within the first 10 minutes.”
Just last summer, there were at least three hot car deaths in Texas.
Those included an infant in Houston who died when police said his mother left him unattended while she went into a medical clinic.
"As a mother, I say it’s sad,” said the neighbor we spoke with about this latest incident.
The Harris County District Attorney's office will ultimately determine if any charges are appropriate.
Experts recommend putting something like a purse, wallet or phone in the backseat so that children aren't forgotten. They say you should also teach children of all ages how to unbuckle the seat belt, honk the horn and turn on the hazard lights to get attention.
Pets should never be left in hot cars either.
