A North Carolina woman has been sentenced to 105 days in jail for leaving her 8-year-old daughter in a hot car, resulting in the child’s death. Ashlee Rochelle Stallings was working at an Amazon Fulfillment Center when the incident occurred. The sentence was handed down by Mecklenburg Superior Judge William T. Stetzer after Stallings pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of contributing to the neglect of a minor and a count of misdemeanor child abuse.
Stallings was sentenced to 45 days for the neglect charge and an additional 60 days for the child abuse charge. The sentences will be served consecutively. Stallings was credited with 56 days of time already served. The maximum sentence she could have faced was 270 days.
In return for her guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of felony involuntary manslaughter and reduce a charge of child abuse by willful act causing serious injury. The charges stemmed from an incident on June 26, 2024, when police responded to a call about an unresponsive child at the Amazon Fulfillment Center.
Upon arrival, first responders discovered the 8-year-old girl in critical condition inside a vehicle. The child was transported to Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center with a life-threatening condition. She was pronounced dead shortly after midnight on June 27, 2024.
Investigations revealed that the child had been left in the vehicle in hot weather conditions, leading to a medical emergency. The temperature in Charlotte that day had reached 99 degrees, one of the hottest days of the year.
Stallings admitted to police that she had left her daughter in the car while she was at work. She claimed that the vehicle was running with the air conditioning on, but she believed her daughter turned the car off because she was cold. Stallings found her daughter unresponsive in the back seat when she returned to the vehicle. She attempted to break the car window and drive her daughter to the hospital, but it was too late.
Medical staff at the hospital determined that the cause of death was a herniated brain due to hyperthermia, a condition caused by prolonged exposure to extreme heat.