A Texas man accused of leaving a 10-month-old girl in a backpack in his car while he worked is facing a capital murder charge in the baby’s death.
The man, Trevor Marquis Rowe, 27, was arrested early Wednesday in the death of 10-month-old Marion Jester-Montoya, who was left in the front of a car and was later moved to the trunk Tuesday, Lubbock police said in a statement. The girl was inside the car for more than five hours, police said in an affidavit.
Rowe, who lives with the baby’s mother but is not her father, checked on the infant throughout the day, according to police. When he found that the baby was not breathing, he called 911, drove to an intersection and began CPR, according to police.
Rowe is being held on $2 million bond, according to police and online jail records. Records do not appear to list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
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Rowe told police that he “crammed” the girl into a backpack and went to work and that at one point, the baby had gotten out of the bag but he put her back inside, according to the document.
Rowe said that during his lunch break, the baby was crying lightly and that after the break, he put her in the trunk through the backseat pass-through and returned to work. When Rowe checked on the child around 4:50 p.m., she was not breathing, according to the affidavit.
Sheilah Montoya, the child’s grandmother, told NBC affiliate KCBD of Lubbock that the family was planning her first birthday and a trip to Disney World, “which is never going to happen.”
“The ultimate outcome of it was that now the baby that was our world is now gone,” she told the station.
Emilio Montoya, the baby’s father, told KCBD that she had been learning to walk.
A cause of death was not disclosed in the police statement.
The temperature in Lubbock was in the low 60s Tuesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
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Officials have warned parents and other caregivers not to leave children in vehicles because temperatures can reach life-threatening levels.
There were 52 “pediatric vehicular heatstroke” deaths last year through Dec. 11, according to the website noheatstroke.org, which tracks such deaths and has been cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The deaths include cases in which children were left in cars and others in which they got into vehicles on their own.