Highland Park woman accused of leaving children inside hot car in Pasadena

PASADENA >> Police arrested a woman after rescuing her two young children from a car left parked in the scorching summer heat Friday afternoon.
Corina Yolibet Lopez, 35, of Highland Park was arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment, according to Pasadena police officials and Los Angeles County booking records.
Officials responded to a report of children locked inside a vehicle about 2:40 p.m. in the parking lot of the Pasadena Public Health Department, 1845 N. Fair Oaks Ave., according to Pasadena police and fire officials.
“The interior of the car, when the fire department removed the children, was 120 degrees. They were dripping with sweat,” Pasadena Fire Department spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said.
The kids appeared to be okay, but were taken to a hospital for examination, Pasadena police Lt. Art Chute said.
Lopez told investigators she left the children in the car for only a few minutes while she visited a nearby convalescent home, officials said.
But witnesses indicated the 3-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl had been left inside the car longer, Derderian said.
A passer-by first spotted the children in the car as outside temperatures climbed past 90 degrees and notified a security guard, Derderian said.
The security guard tried to persuade the 7-year-old girl to open the door to the sweltering car, but she would not open the door to the stranger, Derderian said.
The girl ultimately opened the door to the Honda Fit and was removed from the car along with her little brother when uniformed firefighters arrived on-scene and instructed her to, she said.
“Our fire personnel were confident that if they’d been in there even a few minutes longer, it would have been a more serious scenario,” Derderian said. “Kudos to the security guard and the bystander who noticed that they were in the car.”
Lopez was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail pending her initial court appearance, according to booking records.

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