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MERRIAM, Kansas –A Kansas woman grabbed whatever she could find to break a window and save a 2-year-old trapped in a sweltering car at a shopping center.
It happened as temperatures in Kansas City felt like 110 degrees.
Sarah Oropeza, the manager of a shoe store was ringing up a customer when one of her co-workers came running back inside the store screaming for help.
“The windows were totally rolled up, all the doors were locked. She was covered in sweat. When I looked in the back window, she was covered in sweat. She had pulled her hair back and sweat was just dripping” Oropeza said.
Orpeza and others tried using a screwdriver, chair and tire iron, but the window would not break.
Just has the window finally cracked, a woman came up with a truck hitch and threw it at the window.
The toddler may have been in the dangerously hot car for up to 10 minutes while the couple who drove her there were at a nearby cell phone store.
“She was crying, and she was drenched in sweat, like her shoes were wet, her socks were wet. She was so drenched in sweat. I just started crying,” Oropeza said.
A nurse was also on scene and gave the child medical attention until an ambulance arrived.
Oropeza’s tears turned to anger when the couple, claiming the toddler was their niece, came in the shoe store and asked to get her back.
“No emotion at all, whatsoever. The only question they had for police was if insurance was going to pay to cover the window that we broke,” Oropeza said.
The couple was ticketed for child endangerment, and the case is going to the District Attorney.
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