The Montgomery County community grapples with tragedy this week following the death of a two-year-old girl, discovered unresponsive inside a vehicle on Wednesday, in an incident that police are painstakingly investigating but have not labeled as criminal at this time. According to an official statement by the Montgomery County Police Department, emergency services were called to a Wheaton-Glenmont area residence at precisely 1:44 p.m. where they encountered the dire situation.
Facts at present straddle the lines of the known and the nebulous; responders arrived to a scene no one is equipped to face, one where a toddler sat silent in the metal embrace of a car seat, having been there several hours, her youth rendering her both invisible and silent to the ongoings outside her inadvertent chamber. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, her fate sealed away from the warmth of expectant arms; she did not survive—per Montgomery County’s announcement, the child was later pronounced dead though the exact cause and manner await autopsy results from the Chief Medical Examiner.
While the air is heavy with the weight of an unanswered question, the suspire of negligence or malice, police have thus far not ventured down the path of calling the death a homicide. The Montgomery County Police Department underscore in their brief that, at this juncture, there is no additional information to share, and they are excising a measure of caution as they navigate the early contours of this investigation…