LOCAL NEWS
Mom who left kids in car admits to having a 'little alcohol'
05:57 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 3, 2008
ROSENBERG, Texas – Two toddlers were rushed to the hospital Monday after they were accidentally left in a hot car for eight hours.
"I came out and saw the babies laying on the ground. They were purple and blue," said Norma Sierra, a neighbor.
According to Rosenberg police, the mother of the little boys left a party at 4:00 a.m. She stopped at her mother's house, picked up her children, and then drove home to Gegelskis Trailer Park.
Mendoza said she left her sleeping children in the truck because she only planned to go inside for a shot time. Instead she talked to her husband and fell asleep.
Eight hours later, she woke up and up and realized her children were still strapped in their car seats in the truck.
Police said she admitted that she'd had "a little" alcohol.
"She did tell us that she drank that evening, but at 5 o'clock in the morning, we don't know how strong it may have been or how much was still in her system," said Lynn Munford with the Rosenberg Police Department.
An 11 News crew saw two strollers surrounded by beer and a few half-empty bottles of liquor in the bed of the family's pickup truck.
The Ishmael, 1, and Evon, 2, were found unconscious and unresponsive, and their breathing was shallow.
11 News
A 20-year-old mother accidentally left her two children in car for eight hours.
Another neighbor called 911 while Sierra performed CPR on the 2-year-old. She said he wasn't breathing when she found him.
"I was trying to give him some air....give him CPR. He was trying to close his eyes, but I was trying to keep him up," said Sierra. "That's when the police and ambulance arrived."
The boys survived and as of Wednesday were still in the hospital. The oldest boy is in critical condition.
Sierra said the children's mother, 20-year-old Sandra Mendoza, tried to get help by knocking on the neighbor's door and spraying the children down with water.
"She kept saying, 'my babies, my babies,'" said Sierra.
Sierra lives a few trailers over from Mendoza and has two children of her own.
"Seeing the two babies laying on the ground like that was the scariest thing in the world," said a tearful Sierra. "I didn't sleep all last night, I was so worried. It's so terrible. It's just so terrible."
Mendoza was arrested and charged with two counts of injury to a child. She's being kept in a padded cell in the Fort Bend County Jail.
Sierra and other neighbors are still trying to understand how this could happen.
"Even an animal will go back for its baby. That's not right, that's not right," Sierra said.
Earlier this summer, a 3 -year-old boy died after his grandmother forgot he was in the car when she went to work in Webster.
The following day, another 3-year-old died in a Cypress-area hospital parking lot when his mother forgot he was in the car and went inside to work. The boy was able to crawl out of the car seat and may have tried to start the car or open the door, but he didn't survive.
Neither woman was charged.
As of August 30, 33 children throughout the U.S. have died this year after being left in hot cars.
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