The State : Infant’s Death Stirs Warning

A woman whose 8-month-old baby apparently strangled on a seat belt after being left alone in a car warned other parents “never to assume your child is too safe” and said she never meant to neglect her daughter. “I guess I’m guilty of neglect to an extent, but I didn’t intend to neglect her,” Shirley Jean Riojas, 27, of Richmond told the Oakland Tribune. Hayward police are awaiting autopsy results before deciding whether to file charges in the May 19 death of Whitney Ann Sam, who was left alone sleeping in a car outside a restaurant while Riojas and a friend lunched. “I accept I made the wrong decision not to bring her in,” she said about the baby. “Why I ever thought of leaving her even for that moment, I’ll never know. I’m not trying to make excuses. . . .” Riojas said the car was parked in the shade not far from a booth where she and her friend sat with a view of the vehicle. While the women were paying the bill, the baby apparently got loose of her car seat, became entangled in the seat belt and suffocated.