A Connecticut father allegedly drove his vehicle three times in July before noticing that his 15-month-old son had died in the back seat, according to court documents. Four months later, he has finally turned himself in to police authorities.
In the latest case of hot car deaths, Kyle Seitz was arrested on Tuesday and charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of his son, Benjamin Jacob Seitz, which is punishable by a maximum one year in prison, according to Fox CT.
"He continues to have the support of his family and close friends," Seitz's lawyer John Gulash told New York Daily News this week. "It's a difficult time for everyone."
On July 7, Seitz allegedly missed the turn-off to Benjamin's day care and instead stopped to get coffee before driving straight to work. He later drove to get lunch without noticing his son in the car, according to the arrest warrant.
After work, when he went to pick up his son from the day care around 5 p.m., the staff informed Seitz that Benjamin had not come to school that day.
He then "walked out heading to his car in the parking lot and began walking faster," according to the warrant.
With "shock and terror," he found his son unresponsive in a rear-facing child safety seat and rushed him to Danbury Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
After being left alone in the car for seven hours while temperatures hit 88F, the 15-month-old died of hyperthermia, caused by environmental exposure, The Courant reported.
Although the state's medical examiner's office had ruled the death to be a homicide on Aug. 21, authorities remained unsure if they would proceed with charges at the time, instead claiming the investigation as ongoing.
However Seitz, a father to a 6-year-old and 8-year-old, turned himself in after learning this week that there was a warrant out for his arrest.
Weeks after the 15-month-old's death, Benjamin's mother, Lindsey Rogers-Seitz, described it as a tragic accident and said she forgave her husband of 12 years.
"I love my husband," Rogers-Seitz, a lawyer, said. "Of course I forgive him. But it doesn't mean that our lives aren't different now. So we have to move forward with a new, different reality for us, and it's always going to be that way."
Meanwhile, Benjamin's death prompted Rogers-Seitz to start a blog, The Gift of Ben, to raise awareness of the dangers of leaving children in hot cars.
"I've shed more tears in the past 4 months than the better part of my entire life," she wrote Nov. 3. "I don't have Ben physically anymore, but he is spiritually around me every day."
