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Background: News footage of the car where Maya Hernandez allegedly left her two sons (WGET). Inset: Amillio Gutierrez (GoFundMe).
A California woman who allegedly left her two baby boys in a hot car while she got a cosmetic procedure now faces charges.
Maya Hernandez, 20, entered a plea of not guilty to charges of manslaughter and two instances of willful cruelty to a child during her court proceeding on July 1. She is currently detained at the Kern County Jail with bail set at over $1 million. Local ABC affiliate KFSN acquired a criminal complaint reporting that Hernandez had taken her two sons — an unidentified 2-year-old and 1-year-old Amillio — to an appointment at a medical spa located in Bakersfield.
Authorities reported that she left her sons in the car as the temperature outside soared into the triple digits while she completed paperwork and underwent a lip-filler procedure, even though she had called the facility earlier that morning to ask if she could bring her children inside.
“Sure if you don”t mind them waiting in the waiting room hun,” the spa told Hernandez, according to local ABC affiliate KERO.
Instead, Hernandez left the boys strapped into their car seats inside the locked car, police said.
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The criminal complaint states that the cosmetic procedure Hernandez attended typically lasts about 15-20 minutes. However, spa employees informed police that on June 29, the day of her appointment, it was particularly busy. Hernandez reportedly left her car unattended for roughly two and a half hours and failed to check on her children during that time.
Hernandez later told police that she thought her boys would be okay because she left the air conditioning on.
KGET, a local NBC affiliate, reported that Hernandez’s car was a 2022 Toyota Corolla hybrid. According to an expert quoted in the criminal complaint who spoke to Bakersfield police, the car’s engine was designed to shut itself off after an hour. When the boys were found, the car was warm inside.
Police believed that the boys were in the car without air conditioning for around an hour and a half. The air temperature that day was reportedly 101 degrees.
When Hernandez finally returned to her car at 4:30 p.m. after getting her lips done, she found Amillio foaming at the mouth and having a seizure, police said. Employees of the medical spa rushed out to help and brought the 2-year-old boy inside to cool him down with water. Police arrived at the scene at 4:45 p.m.
Amillio, who had a body temperature of 107 degrees, was brought to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:48 p.m. His brother was hospitalized and later put in child protective custody.
According to a GoFundMe page, the boys’ father is currently incarcerated. He was informed of his son’s death by a jail chaplain, according to KFSN.
The criminal complaint stated that when Hernandez was told that her younger son was dead, she “admitted that she knew it was irresponsible to leave her kids in the car, and she thought about it when she got out of the car, but had no justification as to why she left them anyway.”
Hernandez is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on July 14.