Twin Boys Die In Hot Car As Dad Forgot To Drop Them Off At Day Care

BLYTHEWOOD, SC — No charges will be filed against the father of two twin boys who died after they were left inside a hot car for an entire day earlier this month.

Authorities said the man was dealing with intense work-related stress and forgot to drop off the 20-month-old twins, Bryson and Brayden McDaniel, at their day care center in Blythewood, South Carolina. The man’s emotional response upon realizing that the boys were in the car the whole day "was not something that you could fake," Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said.

"This family needs prayer, their life will never be the same," Lott said at a news conference reported by NBC's "Today" show and other news outlets."Nothing's going to replace these two boys. Nothing's going to take away the pain this family is going to feel."

The toddlers' deaths were a “horrible, horrible, tragic accident,” he said, explaining the twins' father "was under some intense pressure at work that really had his mind somewhere else that day."

"And in his mind, he really believed that he had dropped the two boys off at day care," Lott said. "There was no doubt in his mind that he had done that."

The McDaniel twins’ Sept. 1 death in South Carolina marked the 18th and 19th hot-car fatalities in 2021, according to the Kids and Cars organization that tracks the information. Three more American children have died in the three weeks since the McDaniel deaths, bringing the yearly toll to 22. On average, 38 kids a year die of vehicular heatstroke after being left in hot cars by their parents or caregivers, or climbing into them on their own and becoming trapped.

About 53 percent of hot-car deaths from 1998-2020 involved adults forgetting there are children in the car, according to data compiled by Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology and climate science at San Jose State University.

“Sadly we all forget things, like the exit we usually take off the freeway, but these are obviously the most important,” Null said in an email to Patch.

Both Null and Kids and Cars Safety founder Janette Fennell think the term "forgotten baby syndrome" has been overused. It refers to research by David M. Diamond, PhD., a leading expert in cognitive neuroscience and a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Research by Diamond, who has studied the hot-car death phenomenon for 15 years, shows parents can forget their kids are in the car as a result of competition among the brain's memory systems.

"Memory is a machine," Diamond told The Washington Post in its 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece examining the phenomenon of hot-car deaths, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cell phone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child."

Fennell told Patch she objected to the use of the term "syndrome" but acknowledged the problem is real.

“It’s just a person who is human, driving to work, thinking they dropped the children off at school or a baby at day care, and then head all the way to work. In their mind, they are 100 percent sure they dropped the kids off at day care, but they didn’t.”

In the recent South Carolina case, Fennell pointed out the father went so far as to drive all the way back to the day care after work, with the twins unknowingly in the back seat the entire time, thinking they were at the day care.

“That shows how when you have prospective memory, thinking about something that’s going to happen in the future, we have it in the back of our brain habit memory,” she said. “But when we get on autopilot, it is so bad. It is so strong it can overtake your prospective memory in an instant.”

The temperature in Blythewood was 82 degrees when the twins died.

Young children are at a heightened risk of dying of heatstroke, and not only due to their inability to escape a hot car. A child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than that of an adult, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Heatstroke begins when the core body temperature reaches about 104 degrees, and children can die when theirs reaches 107.

• Related On Patch: Hot-Car Deaths By The Numbers, And How To Prevent Them

Null said cases of forgetting children in cars ballooned in the mid-1990s when child car seats were taken out of the front passenger seats and placed in the back, most often rear-facing.

“This took many kids out of the line of sight, and we saw a rise in the numbers of children succumbing to pediatric vehicular heatstroke,” he told Patch. “Since that time, the average number of deaths has been around 38.”

The rise in heatstroke deaths coincides nearly year by year with the decline in child deaths caused by airbags, statistics on the Kids for Car Safety website show.

“Airbags are not killing kids anymore,” Fennell said, adding though, that "nothing was done to counteract putting kids in the back seat and out of the line of sight.”

New laws in several states require rear-facing child seats, making it impossible for drivers to see the children.

“Visually, there is no way to tell whether there is a child there or not,” she said.

Lobbyists have pushed Congress to require auto manufacturers equip new cars with technology that would send an alert that someone is still inside the car after it is locked.

Such technology is required in the “Hot Cars Act,” which passed the U.S. House of Representatives after it was rolled into the infrastructure bill earlier this year but later stalled in the Senate.

Even if passed, it could take several years before the technology is universally available. The law would only apply to new cars, which Null said only account for about 5 percent of the vehicles on the road at a given time.

Top officials in the auto industry have said they are doing their part voluntarily.

John Bozzella, founder and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said in a news release that nearly all automakers are installing audible and visual rear seat reminders in their vehicles.

“We’ve made an industry commitment to install these reminder systems in all covered cars and light trucks by 2025,” Bozzella said.

The McDaniel twins died of hyperthermia, Richland County Coroner Naida Rutherford told Today this week. Their deaths have officially been ruled an accident.

Fennell said she’s “impressed” with how local authorities handled the case. She said police performed a thorough investigation and did not assume any guilt on the part of the father, whom authorities have not named.

“They did the right thing,” she said.

As the national child hot-car death toll since 1998 surpassed 900 with the deaths of the McDaniel twins, the NHTSA has issued renewed reminders and tips to help parents and other caregivers prevent leaving children in cars during hot weather.

From the NHTSA:

1. Never leave a child in a vehicle unattended — even if the windows are partially open or the engine is running, and the air conditioning is on.
2. Make it a habit to check your entire vehicle — front and back — before locking the door and walking away. Train yourself to “Park, Look, Lock,” or always ask yourself, "Where's Baby?"
3. Ask your child care provider to call if your child doesn’t show up for care as expected.
4. Place a personal item, such as a purse or briefcase in the back seat, as another reminder to look before you lock. Write a note or place a stuffed animal in the passenger's seat to remind you that a child is in the back seat.
5. Store car keys out of a child's reach and teach children that a vehicle is not a play area.