Mother arrested for leaving son in hot car in Middletown

☀️Shoppers called police after spotting a crying, sweating 1-year-old in a car

☀️Officers moved the boy into an air-conditioned police vehicle

☀️Police charged the child's mom with child endangerment and animal cruelty offenses

MIDDLETOWN — A mother who left her toddler in a car while she shopped asked about her pit bull first when she returned, according to police.

Shoppers at TJ Maxx on Route 35 in Middletown called police when they saw the 1-year-old boy in the car crying and sweating in the back seat, according to Middletown Police Chief Craig Weber. The engine was not running, meaning the air conditioner was not running, according to Weber.

Officers put the boy in a police vehicle with the air conditioning running while they waited for an ambulance.

"It was hot and incredibly humid Thursday afternoon. At a weather station in nearby Holmdel, I'm seeing a temperature of 91 and a dew point of 76 as of 3:30 p.m.," according to New Jersey 101.5 Chief Meteorologist Dan Zarrow. "That would give a heat index of 103 degrees."

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How fast the interior of a car heats up (left), sun at a Jersey Shore beach (Dept. of Meteorology & Climate Sciences, San Jose State University/Bud McCormick)

Keansburg woman charged

When the child’s mother, Christina Joubert, 39, of Keansburg approached the car, police said she asked first about her dog, which had jumped out the window. The child's father took custody of his son after an examination at Hackensack Meridian Health Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, police said.

Joubert was charged with second-degree endangering the welfare of a child and cruelty to an animal, a disorderly persons offense. She is being held at the Monmouth County Correctional Institution pending a detention hearing.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over the past 25 years more than 1,000 children have died of heatstroke because they were left or became trapped in a hot car. A child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s.