Officials Warn of Parked-Car Danger After El Toro Girl, 3, Dies

A 3-year-old El Toro girl died of apparent heat exhaustion last week after climbing into the family car, prompting Orange County safety and medical officials to warn Tuesday that unlocked parked cars can become death traps for children.

The tragedy occurred last Thursday afternoon when Sara Marie Knitter became trapped inside the car, which was equipped with “child-proof” locks, and crawled behind a partially reclined passenger seat where she could not be seen, said Lt. Richard J. Olson, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

The car’s tinted windows obscured a view of the child’s body inside, he said.

Her parents searched frantically, and at one point John Knitter got into the car and drove around the neighborhood looking for his daughter, Olson said.

A neighbor spotted the the girl inside the car as a full-scale Sheriff’s Department search, including the use of a helicopter, was under way, Olson said.

Olson said preliminary autopsy results indicated that death came from intense heat inside the car, but further tests are being made. The high temperature in El Toro that day was 87 degrees.

It was the second death in the county this year of a young child playing in or around a parked family car.

On May 24, also in the El Toro area, a 4-year-old boy accidentally hanged himself after he caught his head in the family’s parked car. The child, Ian Land, was trying to climb into the car to get a toy left in the vehicle, said county Senior Deputy Coroner Richard Rodriguez.

No criminal charges are being filed in either of the deaths.

“I would say the two deaths over this short period of time show that something needs to be done,” said Dr. John G. West, founder and chairman of the board of the Orange County Trauma Society. “Attention must be drawn to the dangers before there are six or eight more deaths.”

West said the deaths underscore the need for constant adult supervision of very young children. County officials said the two tragedies show how dangerous unlocked, parked vehicles can be.

Olson said adults should always remember to lock the doors of their cars so children can’t get inside. Even adults with no children of their own should remember to keep car doors locked, Olson noted, because neighborhood children may try to climb into their cars.

Rodriguez, of the coroner’s office, said adults likewise must be careful about leaving car windows open. “If you leave a car window open in your parked car, it should only be open a small crack so that no child can possibly climb inside,” he added.

Olson said the car the Knitter child climbed into had inside locks that are referred to as child-proof. Such locks keep children from accidentally opening car doors while being driven. But in the case of parked cars, child-proof locks, if accidentally pushed down by children inside a car, can keep them trapped inside.

A spokesman for the National Safety Council in Chicago said Tuesday that it had no statistics on how many accidents nationally stem from children getting into, or trying to get into, parked autos. But the spokesman noted that the syndicated advice column, Dear Abby, carried a letter Tuesday about the death of a 5-year-old child in Mississippi who had climbed into the family’s car and became trapped by the car’s child-proof door locks. That child also died from heat inside the car.

West, the founder of the Orange County Trauma Society, said: “Our concern is to try to prevent traumas rather than to have to treat them. In the situation of children, there is no substitute for supervision. Kids will get into trouble if they’re not supervised. You’ve just got to watch over them.

“As a parent, I’m also aware of how children will try to follow a grown-up out to the car. I make it a habit to lock the house doors behind me so a child won’t run out and get in the path of the car as it comes out of the garage.”