29-year-old foster parent Seth Jackson of Wichita, Kansas has been charged with first degree murder following the death of a 10-month-old baby girl under his care after he left her in a sweltering car on July 24.
Jackson and his partner had been smoking marijuana and eating leftover pizza inside their home when a crying baby on an episode of Game of Thrones reminded him that the baby was still inside the vehicle, according to a police affidavit.
According to the AP, Jackson left the baby inside the car after picking her up from a babysitter following a doctors’ appointment he attended with his adopted 5-year-old daughter.
The other parent said he had been working outside in the yard and came inside where he saw Jackson who he assumed had just gotten home. They ate leftover pizza, “smoked marijuana that Seth had picked up that day” and watched an episode and a half of Game of Thrones. It was a crying baby on the particular episode that reminded Jackson the baby was still in the vehicle.
The affidavit said the other parent ran to the vehicle as Jackson unlocked it from the front porch. The girl was “hot to the touch and stiff when he grabbed her.” The other parent, who estimated that the child had been inside the vehicle for approximately 2 hours – with the windows up on a day in which temperatures reached 90 degrees, took her inside the home where “they tried performing CPR but could not get her mouth open.”
When police arrived Jackson was in the yard on the phone. He had made about 4 phone calls and stated, “I left her in the car, she’s dead, she’s dead.”
The AP added that Jackson and his partner were trying to adopt the 10-month-old that they had been foster parents of since she was 2-weeks-old and that they have three other foster children ages 3, 5 and 18, and two adopted children ages 5 and 7.
No charges have been filed against Jackson’s partner.
