HOUSTON – A good Samaritan jumped into action after seeing two small children locked inside a hot car.
“You could see them sweating and crying. So I called immediately 911,” the woman said.
According to court documents, the children’s mother left them while she shopped for 40 minutes at Target on Eldridge Parkway in west Houston.
The good Samaritan is a mother herself and is expecting a baby in just a few weeks.
“I was there at the right time, right place… right moment,” she said.
According to court documents, the incident happened on June 17. The mother and her fiancé saw the children locked in a hot car.
“I started pulling on every single door, the back, the two passengers, the driver door. I tried to open the door. You could see them sweating and crying,” she said.
The woman called 911 and police rushed to the shopping center within two minutes.
Police had to break a window to save two little boys -- ages 2 and 9 months old -- who were strapped inside the car with the engine turned off. Authorities said the children were sweating and lethargic, their skin hot to the touch. The estimated temperature inside the car reached 136 degrees that day.
“You could see drips of sweat coming down their chest. I remember that completely. It just shocked me because I’m like ‘I know they probably been there more than five minutes,’” the good Samaritan said.
Based on security footage at Target, court documents show the children’s mother, 30-year-old Kennison Paige McGrew, left them in the car for 40 minutes.
“I stood there until the cops left and they never took her. It made me angry because I don’t understand who leaves two kids. I just don’t,” the woman said.
The good Samaritan said McGrew came out of the store with another child and didn’t seem concerned about leaving her other kids in the hot car.
“She seemed more afraid of the consequences that was going to happen to her because she was saying, ‘I have another child with me.’ She didn’t ask are they okay or say, ‘OMG I left them,’” she said.
Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct 5 deputies said McGrew identified herself and told deputies, at first, that she thought she left the car engine running when she left her children alone and unsupervised in the car. Documents show she then said that her children were asleep and quiet when she arrived in the parking lot and that she forgot they were in the backseat.
McGrew is charged with endangering a child, documents show. She has not yet been arrested and authorities have filed a motion for a $25,000 bond.