- April 29, 2024
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A four-year-old boy found locked in his family’s hot Jeep Sunday afternoon is home from the hospital and expected to make a full recovery.
Palm Coast dad Scott LaPete was at a softball game in Port Orange with his daughter when his eldest daughter called from home in a panic: The 13-year-old had been left to watch her 4-year-old brother Lawton, and she’d fallen asleep next to him and woken up to find the front door open and her brother missing. She called 911, then her parents.
“She was hysterical, so she couldn’t really talk well, Scott LaPete said. “She couldn’t find him. She went into a real panic. The door was wide open. She called 911 which, was what we discussed with her, and she made the right call. ... If she hadn’t made that call at that time, it would be a whole other conversation, so she saved her brother’s life.”
Deputies searching the area for the little boy found him lying unconscious in the backseat of the family’s locked sport utility vehicle in the driveway at around 2:30 p.m. The temperatures on Sunday afternoon rose into the 90s, and Lawton’s temperature was 107.1 degrees when deputies cut him out of the Jeep, Scott LaPete said.
“Deputies ran him under water and did CPR — and all that time we were on the phone, and we were in Port Orange — they got him cooled down, paramedics showed up and they took over from there,” Scott LaPete said.
Lawton was rushed to Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville and placed on a ventilator.
“Seeing him laying there —we were in distress, and we had a bunch of family members and paramedics at the hospital, my in-laws; I was with my older daughter —it was gut-wrenching,” Scott LaPete said. “Everybody else was super upset. I was trying to hold it together to make sure there was somebody that could at least think straight at the time.”
Doctors kept Lawton in the hospital’s intensive care unit Sunday and Monday, then placed him under observation Tuesday to make sure he was eating and drinking normally, and released him Tuesday night, Scott LaPete said.
LaPete said he was grateful to the Sheriff’s Office deputies and paramedics who rescued his little boy.
Lawton is getting back to normal, Scott LaPete said, but he’s not quite there yet: He used to love to jump off the furniture, for instance, but hasn’t done that since he’s been home.
“There are still some things that he used to do that he doesn’t do now; he’s more reserved,” Scott LaPete said. “We’re trying to get back to a little normalcy. I think he’s going to be back to normal soon.”
For previous coverage of this story, click here.
