Mother charged after 8-year-old girl dies in hot car in North Carolina

A North Carolina woman has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after police said her 8-year-old daughter died from being left in a hot car.

According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Departmen t, officers responded to an emergency call Wednesday evening on Wilkinson Boulevard in Charlotte and found the young girl in critical condition inside a car.

The girl was transported to a local hospital where she was later pronounced dead, police said.

Based on their investigation, detectives believe the girl was left alone in the hot car and suffered a medical emergency that resulted in her death.

The girl's mother, identified as 36-year-old Ashlee Stallings, was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter and child abuse by willful act causing serious injury.

The Associated Press reported the mother told police she left the child in the car with the air on while she went to work, but she believed the child may have cut the air off. She also reportedly told police she had heard from the child via text about an hour and a half before she returned to the car, and that's when she found her child unresponsive on the backseat floorboard.

Police said the woman busted into the car with a hammer and stopped by a nearby business to get help on her way to the hospital, according to the Associated Press.

Stallings is in the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office.