Police officer discovers baby in sweltering car – breaks the window, only to realize he made a serious error
We’ve previously covered the alarming instances of parents leaving their infants in hot cars while shopping. This practice isn’t just irresponsible—it’s incredibly dangerous.
Prolonged exposure to heat can lead to heatstroke, fainting, or even death.
It’s a situation common enough to raise concern among law enforcement officers, who are always on the lookout for children left unattended in vehicles, particularly during scorching weather.
One such officer is Jason Short from Keene, New Hampshire. On a particularly hot day, he received a distress call about an infant left alone in a car in a Walmart parking lot.
Little did he know what he was about to encounter. Upon receiving the call, Jason rushed to the scene without hesitation.
“I got there as fast as I could,” Jason said in an interview with WMUR. “I don’t even remember how fast I was going, but it was quick.”
When he arrived, Jason saw a baby wrapped in a blanket with its tiny feet hanging out of the car window. The temperature was soaring, and he had no idea how long the child had been there.
Without a second thought, he smashed the window open with his baton to free the child.
As he gently pulled the baby from the car, Jason feared the worst. The infant appeared pale, lifeless, and strangely discolored, leading him to believe it might already be dead.
A crowd quickly gathered as Jason began performing CPR. An ambulance was called, and that’s when he started to feel something wasn’t quite right.
It didn’t take long for the realization to hit: what he had been holding wasn’t a baby—it was a remarkably realistic doll.
The doll’s owner, Carolynne Seiffer, returned from her shopping trip to find a broken window and a crowd surrounding her $2,000 doll, which she calls Ainsley.
“I’ve been laughed at and humiliated by all the attention,” Carolynne told WMUR.
According to the Washington Post, Carolynne owns about 40 of these lifelike dolls, which she uses as part of her grief therapy after losing her son.
These dolls, designed to look eerily real, provide comfort to parents struggling with profound loss.
“You can’t judge how others cope with their grief,” Carolynne explained.
Though Jason felt a bit embarrassed after realizing he had rescued a doll, he expressed no regrets, only relief that the situation wasn’t as dire as he had feared.
“I would never have assumed it was a doll,” he said. “I would always think it’s a child. I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
The Keene Police Department covered the $300 cost to replace Carolynne’s broken window.
