Arizona mother who left 5-month-old baby inside hot car at Target parking lot tells police she just 'forgot'
GOODYEAR, ARIZONA: A 37-year-old mother from Arizona was captured on video telling police officers that after over 30 minutes of shopping at a Target store she realized she had forgotten her five-month-old baby in a hot car in the parking lot.
Despite the temperature on the day of the incident reaching 102 degrees Fahrenheit, the baby fortunately survived.
The woman, identified as Stacey Holly, reportedly said that she was on the phone when she left her car and went into a Target store in Goodyear with her six-year-old daughter.
She then visited the Starbucks in-store and the food market before realizing that she had left her infant locked inside the vehicle.
Holly's six-year-old had unbuckled herself and opened the back door for herself but forgot her younger sister, according to the Daily Mail.
In a newly-released video, Holly can be heard telling the police: "I honestly don't know how it happened. I'm freaking out. I'm sorry. I just don't know how it happened, how do you forget your baby?"
When an officer told her that she would be taken in for questioning regarding the incident, the mother responded with: "I'm not a neglectful mom."
Reports state that Holly's sister was also with her when the incident occurred in June. The infant's aunt called 911 before they were seen on police bodycam as they explained what had happened.
"We went into target and forgot we had a baby in the back seat," Holly's sister can be heard saying. "We didn't do it on purpose obviously we just forgot that we had a baby with us."
Authorities said that the infant was found red in the face and sweaty outside the Cotton Lane and Yuma Road shopping center. The child was rushed to a nearby hospital on a stretcher with her little sister bawling after realizing what had happened.
The footage also shows one officer saying that he does not believe that the baby was in the car for 30 minutes while another says that the child is lucky to be alive.
"I can't believe the kid survived that long," an officer says on camera.
"You got lucky on this one, man. Thirty minutes without it running. It's a long time. It's a little, little baby."
Holly was eventually charged with one count of child endangerment and one count of child neglect.