Every summer, dozens of deaths are attributed to parents who leave their children in the car. Automakers have developed technology to reduce the risk, but fatalities are still a common occurrence.
And this doesn’t concern just kids, but pets, too. Knowing about the risks, a man recently took action when he saw two dogs locked inside a car at a Walmart in Parma, Ohio. As Cleveland.com reports, Richard Hill was leaving the store when he saw a group of bystanders gathered around a vehicle.
While they had already called police minutes earlier, Hill grabbed a hammer and broke into the car. He told the publication he believed his actions were justified as “the small puppy was not even moving, sitting up or anything.”
Just as Hill smashed the window, police arrived. They weren’t convinced the dogs were in immediate danger, as Sergeant Dan Ciryak said the car’s sunroof was open and the rear windows were cracked. As a result, Hill was cited for the damage.
This is where things get tricky. Ohio has passed a law that was designed to protect people who break into vehicles to save children or animals. Despite this, Ciryak says Hill should be punished because he “should have waited a little more.”
While it is easy to argue both sides of the issue, the publication says the law doesn’t force people to wait until police arrive. Instead, it only requires they call 911, check to see if the doors are unlocked and only break into a vehicle if they feel like it is an emergency.
This probably wasn’t the case in this situation, as temperature was 78° (25.5° C) and the owner was only gone for about 14 minutes. Of course, Hill couldn’t have known how long it would take for police to arrive or how long the dogs had already been in the vehicle.
Even though the outside temperature was moderate, the NHTSA says the temperature inside a vehicle can climb nearly 20° F (6.6° C) within ten minutes. Even on days in the mid-60s, the agency warns the inside temperature can quickly climb beyond 110° F (43.3 C).
While the dogs were okay and their owner wasn’t ticketed, 18 children have already died of pediatric vehicular heatstroke in the United States this year alone. In the past decade, 760 children have lost their lives due to this preventable issue.
The question is, who’s really at blame here? Hill, whose intention was to save the dogs from a possible death due to heat, yet got a citation, or the car’s owner who left the pets in the car in the first place?
