A 44-year-old woman will go to prison accused of death of a minor who forgot inside a car in Florida, United States.
Juana Pérez-Domingo pleaded guilty to aggravated homicide this Monday, and will face a sentence of five years in prison for having forgotten a two-year-old girl inside the vehicle for seven hours. Course in which the minor lost her life.
In addition to the imprisonment, the woman must serve another five years of probation, due to the death of Jocelyn Maritza Méndez, which occurred in 2021 in Homestead (south of Miami).
Pérez-Domingo agreed to plead guilty to avoid the trial, since in case of losing it, she would have been sentenced to between 13 and 30 years in prison. Finally, she accepted the plea bargain offered by the Prosecutor’s Office and her sentence was reduced.
According to the investigation, the minor’s parents paid the woman $40 a week to take their daughter to day care in the morning. The day the death occurred, Pérez-Domingo found that it was too early and the establishment was closed, so he drove to his private home.
Once there, the woman entered her house and forgot the girl in the vehicle for seven hours. When she returned to the vehicle, the girl had already lost her life due to the high temperatures inside the car.
This was not an isolated case. Recently, a two-year-old boy died of heat stroke, also in Florida, following being locked in a vehicle for hours. The situation arose due to the alleged forgetfulness of his father, who was arrested.
According to the National Safety Council (NSC) in the United States, an average of 38 children die each year in the country due to heat stroke in vehicles.
