Woman smashes car window to rescue toddler locked in hot car

A mother-of-two in Kansas has told of the dramatic moment she ran out of her work to rescue a toddler that had been left locked in a car with the windows up on a 100-degree day.

Sarah Oropeza, the manager of the Famous Footwear in Merriam, was finishing off a customer sale on Saturday when a co-worker ran into the store screaming for help - she had just found a little girl in a car.

'The windows were totally rolled up, all the doors were locked. She was covered in sweat,'

Oropeza added: 'When I looked in the back window, she was covered in sweat. 

'She had pulled her hair back and sweat was just dripping.'

Oropeza desperately tried to break into the car, but couldn't.

 

Oropeza said her employee opened her trunk to try and find something to break the driver's side window to get to the 2-year-old girl, but the window didn't crack. Oropeza recalled screaming for help that there is a baby in the car. Oropeza herself is a mother of two.

She said that another woman came with a screw driver to see if that could help, but again, the window did not break. Oropeza was not giving up though. She began whacking the window with a tire iron. She got it to crack. Then another woman came up with a truck hitch and threw it at the window. Oropeza said at least four women stepped up to try and help her get to the toddler.

 

"Her shoes were wet, her socks were wet. She was so drenched in sweat. I just started crying," Oropeza said.

Finally, the glass cracked, and then another women came up and threw a truck hitch at the window, shattering it.
Once rescued from the car the child was given medical attention by a nurse at the scene. An ambulance arrived and a police officer bought diapers for the toddler, because there was no diaper bag in the car. Paramedics checked the girl's vitals and she was later picked up by her godmother.

It is believed the couple that drove the child to the shopping area left her in the car while they were at a nearby cellphone store. Oropeza said they claimed the toddler was their niece. They came in the shoe store and asked to get the child 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.
Oropeza and an officer told the couple to leave the store. Police ticketed the couple for child endangerment, and the case is going to the Johnson County District Attorney.

 

 

Sarah Oropeza posted this Facebook message after the ordeal, thanking people for their support

 

 

CBS/Facebook