A Texas mother has been arrested after she told police her two children died in a hot car, but authorities have found ‘inconsistencies’ in her story.
Tiona Islar, the mother of six-year-old Sevani Stevenson and three-year-old Miyani Islar, told police she last saw her children alive in her San Antonio area home around 10am on Saturday.
Islar said she fell asleep and found the children in her car around 3pm before bringing them inside, according to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.
The mother added that the siblings must have made their way outside and somehow gotten into the car.
She called police around 3:25pm and a deputy arrived who tried to perform CPR on both children at the same time.
The attempts to save them were unsuccessful and the siblings were pronounced dead at the scene, Salazar said.
‘There just are some inconsistencies with the story we’re being given,’ the sheriff noted.
‘I’m not confident enough to give you all that that’s definitively what happened,’ he added.
Islar, 28, was arrested on felony charges of injury to a child. The sheriff said she has been ‘mostly’ cooperative and that he hopes conversations with her will be able to shed more light on what happened.
Tiona Islar told police she last saw her children alive in her home at 10am before finding them in her car around 3pm
Islar told police that her children must have made their way out of the home and into the car while she was asleep
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said there were ‘inconsistencies’ in the mother’s story
Salazar also mentioned that the family previously had an encounter with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and Child Protective Services.
A sheriff’s spokesperson said the investigation is still underway and authorities are awaiting the cause of death from the medical examiner.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is asking for anyone with information about the case, including video from the area, to contact them.
Salazar advised anyone who comes across a child in a locked car on a hot day to try to open the doors. If the doors are locked, he said to break a window and ‘do whatever you have to do to get that kid out of there.’
At least 1,159 children have died in hot cars in the US since 1990, according to Kids and Car Safety, with at least 28 deaths this year. On average, 37 children under the age of 15 die each year from heatstroke after being left in a vehicle
Nearly every state has experienced at least one hot car death since 1998, but Texas is the state with the highest total number in the country at 155, according to NSC Injury Facts.
