Missing Kentucky toddler dies after she’s found unresponsive in car

A 2-year-old Corbin girl died in a hospital Thursday after she was found unresponsive inside a vehicle, according to media reports.

Aubrey Rose was last seen around 7:30 a.m. Thursday and she was reported missing just after 2 p.m., The Times Tribune reported.

Kentucky State Police said Friday afternoon that preliminary autopsy results indicated that Audrey died of hyperthermia, and foul play is not suspected.

Multiple law enforcement agencies went to a Leona Wyatt Road residence near Corbin Thursday afternoon, and while searching the property, they found the girl unresponsive inside a vehicle, WYMT reported. Whitley County sheriff’s deputies and Corbin Police Department officers got her out of the car and began CPR, according to The Times Tribune.

Aubrey was taken to Baptist Health Corbin, where she died, according to WKYT.

A GoFundMe account set up to help the family says that Aubrey and her father took the child’s mother to work early in the morning, then lay down for a nap before the father had to pick the child’s mother back up and go to work himself.

“Aubrey normally always wakes her daddy up if she wakes up before him,” the website states.

But while her father slept on Thursday, the site set up by Steve Antrim says, Aubrey managed to get outside, through a gate that was normally kept locked and into her father’s car, where she liked to “sit and play with the steering wheel.”

The site says the gate was left unlocked Thursday because an ambulance had picked the child’s grandfather up earlier that morning.

The father called police to report Aubrey missing when he awoke and couldn’t find her, the GoFundMe page states.

“Aubrey is my brother’s whole world,” Antrim wrote. “He loves her more than anything. Please keep Aubrey, her mom and dad, and my whole family in your prayers.”

Kentucky State Police said they were attempting to figure out what led up to Aubrey’s death.

“That’s human nature,” Trooper Jordan Hopkins told WYMT. “You’re going to imagine yourself in their shoes. You’re going to imagine what life would be like if that were you and your child, and that helps us do our job ... to put ourselves in those positions and realize what would we want.”

KidsAndCars.org, which tracks the deaths of children in hot cars, says 25 other children have died in hot vehicles so far this year.

This story was originally published August 2, 2019 at 9:33 AM.