HEARTING new details have emerged after a 5-year-old boy tragically died after being left by his mother in a sweltering car for hours.
Trace Means was pronounced dead after his mother Amanda, 36, left him in a car to endure the Texas heat for two to three hours on Monday.
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In family photos, father Steve, 48, mourns the tragic death of his son but does not call on the mother to face charges in the case the Harris County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating.
“He’s in tears, he’s beside himself, but the last thing he wants is for Amanda to be criminally punished,” said the father’s attorney, Gary Block.
“She’s going through enough already.”
The two were going through a divorce and Steve was on a plane to Florida for a business trip at the time of Trace’s death, DailyMail reported.
Amanda would have thought Trace had unbuckled when she went inside to prepare for her 8-year-old daughter’s birthday party.
The boy knew how to get out, but the family was using a loaner Porsche, which Harris County police in Texas believe the child may not have known how to get out of.
The mother wouldn’t have realized where he was until she called his name, two to three hours after he got home.
Detectives believe Amanda only forgot the child and has not faced any charges in the ongoing investigation.
“He knows she’s their mother no matter what happened and nothing was done on purpose,” Block said on Steve’s behalf.
“All he wants to do now is make sure his daughter is okay and everyone can start healing.”
The family called 911 around 2 p.m. Monday, but the young boy was pronounced dead at the scene.
The cause of death has not been determined, but police say it was likely heatstroke as temperatures were well over 100 degrees in Austin.
Steve filed for divorce in January after a decade of marriage, and the two were separated at the time of the tragic incident.
However, Block said the nature of their divorce was not outrageous and the two fell in love.
“There were never any allegations that Amanda was an unfit mother or that there was abuse, nothing like that,” Block told the Mail.
Steve had just landed in Florida for a business trip when he learned of his son’s death.
“At first, he thought she was joking or being sarcastic,” Block said.
“It took a while to figure out it was real.
It comes as record heat could hit the southern and central United States this week, with temperatures expected to reach over 100 degrees and 10 to 25 degrees above average, according to Weather.com.
Severe weather, consisting mostly of heavy rain, is expected to hit the central United States today, and the mid-Atlantic and northeast tomorrow, he added.
According to the National Traffic Safety Administration, more than 900 children have died of heatstroke since 1998 because they were left or trapped in cars.
Twenty-one children died of vehicular heat stroke last year.
A child’s body temperature, which rises three to five times faster than that of adults, can become fatal if it reaches 107 degrees.
Heat stroke can start at 104 degrees.
That investigation is ongoing, Harris County officials said.
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