First responders said that, at first, they only heard the screams of the person who called 911.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Washington County Administration Building in St. George, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024.
Washington County officers found a toddler dead inside a car outside his home Monday evening, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a news release sent Wednesday afternoon, first responders received a call at about 6:11 p.m. Monday. Dispatchers said they couldn’t understand enough to gather information — they just heard someone screaming.
Dispatchers at first treated the call like a 911 hang-up, the release said, and sent officers to the location in Veyo, about 20 miles north of St. George. Eventually they pieced together that a child was hurt, and dispatched medical crews as well.
Medical teams arrived to find an unresponsive 3-year-old boy. The crews, working with an on-call doctor, declared the child dead at the scene, the release said. The child’s body has been taken to the State Medical Examiner’s Office.
Detectives, the sheriff’s office said in the release, determined the boy had been left in the car after he and his family returned home from a shopping trip. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office is working with the Washington County Attorney’s Office on the investigation.
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