A North Carolina mother has been sentenced to 105 days in prison after her 8-year-old daughter died from being left in a hot car. Ashlee Rochelle Stallings was employed at an Amazon Fulfillment Center at the time of the tragic incident. Mecklenburg Superior Judge William T. Stetzer handed down the sentence following Stallings’ guilty plea to a misdemeanor count of contributing to the neglect of a minor and a count of misdemeanor child abuse.
Stallings received a 45-day sentence for the neglect charge and an additional 60 days for the child abuse charge. These sentences will be served consecutively. She was credited with 56 days of time already served. The maximum sentence Stallings could have faced was 270 days.
In exchange for her guilty plea, the prosecution agreed to dismiss a charge of felony involuntary manslaughter and reduce a charge of child abuse by willful act causing serious injury. The charges were a result of an incident on June 26, 2024, when police were called to the Amazon Fulfillment Center regarding an unresponsive child.
Upon their arrival, first responders found the 8-year-old girl in critical condition inside a vehicle. The child was rushed to Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center with a life-threatening condition. She was pronounced dead shortly after midnight on June 27, 2024.
Investigations revealed that the child had been left in the vehicle in hot weather conditions, leading to a medical emergency. The temperature in Charlotte that day had reached 99 degrees, making it one of the hottest days of the year.
Stallings confessed to police that she had left her daughter in the car while she was at work. She claimed that the vehicle was running with the air conditioning on, but she believed her daughter turned the car off because she was cold. Stallings found her daughter unresponsive in the back seat when she returned to the vehicle. Despite her attempts to break the car window and drive her daughter to the hospital, it was too late.
Medical staff at the hospital determined that the cause of death was a herniated brain due to hyperthermia, a condition caused by prolonged exposure to extreme heat.