4-year-old rescued from hot car while mom shops at Walmart

Prosecutors have dropped a felony charge against a Florida mother accused of leaving her 4-year-old daughter in a hot car while she shopped at Walmart, saying she simply displayed "poor parental judgement."

Officers from the Hollywood Police Department responded to the store on July 14 after witnesses heard the child screaming in the car. Reports note that temperatures were around 90 degrees at the time.

"The investigation revealed that the vehicle was not running, and the window was slightly cracked while the child was inside," police said in a statement .

Rescue workers were able to pull the child from the car without breaking any windows.

According to police, surveillance footage shows the girl's mother, 34-year-old Anastasiya Motalava, was shopping inside the store for more than 30 minutes.

Although Motalava was taken into custody on one count of felony child neglect in the incident, that charge was later dropped, according to WTVJ , which obtained a memorandum from Broward Assistant State Attorney Melissa Kelly.

"There is insufficient evidence to establish that the defendant's failure to provide her child with proper supervision rises to the egregious level of culpable negligence required for felony charge of child neglect," Kelly wrote in the memo, released Thursday.

Kelly mentioned that the child wasn't harmed and didn't require medical treatment, and that Motalava told investigators she thought she was only in the store for 10 or 15 minutes, WTVJ reported.

"While defendant's conduct is irresponsible, it does not rise to the egregious level of conduct necessary to show culpable negligence," Kelly said. "This was a single isolated incident of what may be deemed poor parental judgement."

On average, 37 children under the age of 15 die each year from heatstroke after being left in a vehicle, according to No Heat Stroke , which tracks the data. That's about one child every 10 days killed in a hot car. The number of child hot car deaths in 2023 was 29. So far in 2024, 13 deaths have been reported.