A 25-year-old mother in Georgia was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, child cruelty and concealing the death of her 1-year-old daughter, who was left in a hot car for six hours on June 15.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dijanelle Fowler left her daughter, Skylar Fowler, in the car while attending a 10 a.m. hair appointment at the Northlake Tower Festival Shopping Center.
Fowler reportedly left the car running and turned the AC on, yet when she returned to the car at 4 p.m., the car had died. Witnesses said Fowler did not leave the salon to check on her child.
When she returned to her car and saw it was no longer running, she asked a man at the salon to help her start the car. When the unidentified man helped her, he did not see the baby because Fowler covered her up with clothes.
“Between 4 and 4:54 [p.m.] she texted the child’s godfather that she was going to go to an urgent care for headaches,” a detective wrote in a report. “[Fowler] also Googled about signs of seizures.”
According to an arrest warrant, baby Skylar was found dead in an Emory University Hospital parking deck when the mother went there just before 5 p.m. and dialed 911.
However, police said Fowler claimed she had experienced a “seizure of some kind.” While at the scene, police noticed Skylar was unresponsive in the back seat.
The medical examiner’s office believes Skylar had been dead for “some period of time,” the detective wrote. This led police to investigate the holes in Fowler’s timeline of events. On Monday night, Fowler was arrested.
Police said they don’t believe Fowler intended to harm the child because she did leave the air conditioner running. In Fowler’s case, police have only charged her with second degree murder, which doesn’t require malice.