In June 2018, Oregon mom Nicole Engler made national headlines after she accidentally left her 21-month-old "miracle baby" to die in a hot car. At the time, the mom was arrested at the scene and eventually charged with manslaughter. But now, in a controversial move, prosecutors have decided to drop the charges because they say there's no evidence the mom forget her baby intentionally.
On that fateful day in June, Engler left work to pick up her daughter at daycare, only to discover the baby still in her car seat, unresponsive.
Engler, who worked as a pediatric nurse practitioner at Evergreen Family Medicine, told police that her husband normally dropped their daughter, Remington, off at daycare. That morning, he'd still been asleep after a shift as an EMT and she'd decided to take the little girl. In the hustle of the morning rush, Engler followed her usual routine and drove to work, forgetting Remington in the backseat all day in 80-degree heat.
Engler reportedly didn't realize that her daughter was in the car until around 4 p.m. According to the Daily Mail, she even left work midday for lunch at a local coffee shop and mentioned her daughter's daycare to the barista.
When Remington's body was discovered, Engler begged police to let her kill herself said her lawyer, David Terry.
The attorney wrote an open letter that was published by the Daily Mail in which he said that Remington was Engler's "treasure," a baby she had tried for more than a decade to conceive.
"At 4.30 pm, after a grueling day, she walked out to her car and saw the lifeless form of her treasure, the child she had tried for 15 years to have, was told she couldn't, and then gave birth to at the age of 38," he wrote. "Two hours later, suicidal and pulling her hair out in clumps in a s*** smeared, padded iso cell in the Douglas County Jail, with screaming schizophrenics on either side, she begged to be allowed to take her own life."
The Oregon District Attorney's Office made the decision to drop manslaughter charges against Engler due to a lack of evidence.
At a press conference, District Attorney Richard Wesenberg said Remington was "loved and cared for in every way a mother and a father could." He also noted that on the day of Remington's death, a backseat mirror was not properly adjusted, Engler's car was parked in a shaded area without much foot traffic, and the girl's car seat was rear-facing.
"I recognize that reasonable minds may differ on whether criminal charges should be pursued," Wesenberg said. "But I have made my decision based on the totality of the evidence that is available to me, the limits of Oregon law in this matter, and the likelihood a conviction can be obtained."
The news has struck many who sympathized with Engler and were against her initial arrest.
But others argued that the death was criminally negligent, at the very least.
The sad truth is hot car deaths happen frequently, and they are often accidental. Already, 48 kids have died in hot cars in 2018, and nearly every state has had at least one hot car death since 1998. As parents, it's easy to point fingers, place blame, and swear it could never happen to us. But what happened to Engler's loved and desperately wanted daughter is a heartbreaking reminder that we must do everything we can to prevent these kinds of deaths, because really no family is immune to this terrible loss.
