Twin 3-year-old girls were found dead inside a car in Georgia on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
The girls, as Raelynn and Payton Keyes, were discovered shortly after 1:30 p.m. in a car in the backyard of a home they were visiting in the city of Hinesville, local police said, according to NBC affiliate WSAV.
Their caregiver found the preschoolers’ bodies and called 911, the station reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the girls got into the car.
An official cause of death has not been reported, but the temperature reached 90 degrees in Hinesville on Sunday. The twins’ deaths could mark the 45th and 46th hot car fatalities in the United States this year, according to the advocacy group Kids and Cars.
If heat is ruled the cause of death, the girls would be the second set of young twins to die in a sweltering vehicle this year.
In July, New York City social worker Juan Rodriguez left his infant girls in his car when he went to work for the day at 8 a.m. He discovered the children dead at 4:30 p.m.
Rodriguez said he “blanked out” when he left their bodies in the car — a phenomenon experts have said can happen to anyone.
In August, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark declined to bring manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges against Rodriguez to a grand jury, saying his prosecution had been paused while investigators continue to examine the case.