Hot Car Deaths

There are on average 38 human hot car death in the United States each year. There are about 54 animal hot car deaths with another 450 being rescued from the dangers of being locked in a hot car. Some of those cases are prosecuted and others are deemed to be tragic accidents with no charges filed. What separates those cases? What determines the responsibility of a parent or guardian? All of the cases involve neglectful actions that led to the death of a child or children. Isn't neglect (child, adult, or animal), in and of itself, the basis for arrest? It would seem that neglect that leads to death would certainly be an arrestable offense. Here we will take a look at some cases from around the United States. You decide for yourself what determines charges in hot car death cases.

Nicole Engler: Roseburg, Oregon

Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Nicole Marie Engler and her EMT husband spent fifteen years begging the universe for a child. Fifteen years of negative tests, quiet devastation, and the kind of grief that rearranges a person from the inside out. When she finally gave birth to a daughter, Remington, a child she had prayed for with every fiber of her being, you would think motherhood would sit at the front of her mind. On June 21, 2018, in Roseburg, Oregon, the same woman who had spent over a decade pleading for a baby strapped her 21‑month‑old into a car seat, drove to work, and forgot she existed.

Nicole arrived at Evergreen Family Medicine around eight that morning. She walked inside, started her day, and never once realized her daughter was still in the backseat of her Honda CRV. At four that afternoon, she stepped out of the building, only to come screaming back through the doors moments later, Remington’s lifeless body in her arms. Staff tried. Mercy Medical Center tried. But at 4:17 p.m., Remington Engler was pronounced dead.When officers interviewed Nicole, she told them she believed she had dropped Remington at daycare. She said she was “lost in thought” during the ten‑minute drive from her home to Evergreen. She said she simply forgot. The route she drove passed directly by the daycare, the very place she claimed she thought she had left her daughter, yet she never stopped, never looked, never questioned the silence behind her.

It didn’t end there. Nicole left work around noon for lunch. She got into her car, drove one mile to Dutch Bros, ordered coffee, chatted with employees about Remington and about an upcoming family vacation to Mexico. She sat in the driver’s seat, talked about her daughter, and still never noticed the child dying behind her. She then drove back to work, parked, and finished her day.

Multiple opportunities. Multiple stops. Multiple conversations. Not one moment of awareness. The temperature that day reached 80 degrees. Inside the CRV, the heat would have climbed to 123 degrees within an hour. Remington’s body would have fought for survival: sweating, heart racing, breathing accelerating, until her internal cooling systems failed. Her blood vessels would have opened wide in a desperate attempt to shed heat. Her skin would have dried. Her body would have dehydrated so rapidly that consciousness likely slipped away before the final shutdown. It is a brutal physiology, but it offers one small mercy: she probably did not feel her last moments.

Roseburg Police arrested Nicole Engler and charged her with second‑degree manslaughter. She was placed in a suicide‑watch cell, where she begged guards to let her die and tore out clumps of her own hair. In court, her attorney argued for her release, claiming she was being held in a feces‑smeared cell surrounded by schizophrenic inmates. Her bond was set at $50,000, and she walked out. Two fundraisers appeared immediately, one for the Oregon Wildlife Safari in Remington’s name, and one for Nicole’s legal fees.

Nicole admitted she placed Remington in the car seat that morning. She admitted she drove the same route she had driven six days a week for years. She admitted she went to Dutch Bros for lunch and returned to work without ever realizing her daughter was still in the car. Even with her admissions, even with the timeline, even with the evidence, the charges were dropped. Nicole Engler served no additional jail time.

Incredibly today, Nicole still works as a Nurse Practitioner in Roseburg, Oregon! This is not a story that should fade quietly. This is not a tragedy that should be softened for comfort. A child died in a car while her mother, a medical professional trained to recognize distress, symptoms, danger, moved through her day without noticing the absence of her own daughter. People need to sit with that. People need to confront it. People need to understand the weight of what happened, because Remington cannot speak for herself.

Should she have been held liable for the death of her daughter?

Tori Saltzman: Evansville, Indiana

Tori Saltzman took her German Shepperd dogs everywhere with her. She was homeless and she and her dogs depended on one another. A very happy Sadie and Jazzy accompanied their mom in August of 2022 to Walmart on the west side of Evansville, Indiana. The windows were cracked and the dogs had food and water available to them. When officers arrived, they found two panting dogs in a car that was reading an ambient inside temperature of 90 degrees. Both dogs were in fine health and safe, that is until officers attempted to remove the dogs from Saltzman's car. Both of the dogs escaped the car and ran through the heavily-traveled parking Walmart/Home Depot parking lot. When officers finally reached Saltzman, she said she had been in Walmart for 15 minutes, though surveillance footage showed the dogs had been left alone for just under two and a half hours. Saltzman was immediately placed under arrest and booked into the Vanderburgh County Jail for animal cruelty. Tori was recently in court for her ongoing prosecution where a new date for trial was set for May of 2023. The only other charge Tori has in her history is one for no seat belt. She was held on a $100 bond before being released until trial.

Dr. Andrew Tyson Dill: Evansville, Indiana

Oliver "Ollie" Charles Dill was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Dr. and Mrs. Andrew Tyson Dill on June 26, 2016. Just three short years later, on July 19, 2019, his father would strap him into his car seat, drive to work, and forget him, leaving little Ollie to succumb to the effects of hyperthermia and finding him dead hours later.

The day Oliver was left to die a violent and painful death in the back of his father's car, his mother Jamie was at home with her and Andrew's oldest son preparing for a family vacation. Jamie said she checked the daycare app and that it showed Oliver had not been checked in for the day, nor did the app show that Oliver had eaten anything. Jamie dismissed that information as an app failure and continued with her day. She didn't mention what she found on the daycare app until just before Andrew was set to come home for the evening. I'm one hundred percent positive that had Jamie stopped preparing for the upcoming vacation and simply picked up the phone to call the daycare after the app showed he hadn't been checked in for the day, things would have turned out differently. A quick phone call very well could have saved the life of her child after his father neglected to remember that he had a human life in the back seat of his car.

Dill's original story to responding officers was, "I thought I had dropped him off and I went about my day." How does a man think he dropped his child at daycare? A thinking person would make an argument that you either know or don't know if you dropped your child at the place where he would be safe for the day. We aren't talking about a cell phone that was left behind, we are talking about human life. Why is it, you may wonder, that though Dr. Dill admitted to strapping his innocent child into his car seat, driving him to the campus of The University of Southern Indiana, and leaving him in the car while he taught class, his behavior was excused?

Yeah. Makes me wonder too.

Ollie attended daycare on the campus of The University of Southern Indiana at the Children's Learning Center, and that is where Dr. Dill says he intended to take Ollie that fateful July day. Dill works as an Assistant Professor of Accounting in the Business and Engineering Building and utilizes parking lot "J" on the campus. From his home on the west side of Evansville, he drives just under seven miles, thirteen minutes time, to arrive at the Business and Engineering Building. According to Dill, in those thirteen minutes that it took him to drive to work, he simply forgot Oliver was strapped into his car seat that he had strapped little Ollie into just thirteen minutes before he parked his car and went about his day. It is interesting to note that his route takes him directly past the Children's Learning Center, where he was supposed to drop his son off for the day. It is unfortunate that Dill was entrusted with the care of his son, as he continued to drive to parking lot "J", park his vehicle, get his things, lock his vehicle, and walk away. He did all of it without noticing little Ollie in the back seat. When Dill left work for the evening, he strolled to his car and opened the back door. Upon opening the door and seeing little Ollie obviously deceased Dr. Andrew Dill snatched his son from the car seat that he had strapped him into hours earlier and ran with him to the Children's Learning Center for help. The irony of Dill taking his son, dead at his own hands, into the very place where he should have dropped little Oliver for the day just serves to add one more painful twist to Oliver's story.

To understand the passion with which I demand the arrest and prosecution of Dill, you must understand what happened to the tiny body of Oliver. The temperature in Evansville, Indiana, on that fateful July day, was a blistering ninety degrees. The temperature inside the car Oliver was trapped in rose very quickly and would have reached an incredible one hundred nine degrees after only ten minutes. After thirty minutes, Oliver was sitting inside a car with a temperature of one hundred and twenty-four degrees. After ninety minutes, little Oliver Dill was cooking alive inside one hundred and thirty-eight degrees! First, Ollie would have started to sweat as the temperatures inside the closed car began to rise. His heart rate would have increased in speed and decreased in strength. As Ollie sat strapped into the seat that his father put him in, his breathing would have increased as his lungs fought to move oxygen to cells that were starting to break down. His little muscles would have cramped painfully as Ollie strained against the straps that locked him into his death. While the state of Ollie's little body moved into heatstroke, his skin would have started to become dry as his blood vessels spontaneously dilated in an attempt to increase heat loss. The accompanying dehydration can produce nausea, vomiting of what precious little fluid is left in the body, severe headache, and low blood pressure.

Low blood pressure as the body screams for moisture often leads to passing out. It is my hope that is what happened with little Ollie as confusion would be the next symptom to set in. While his father was inside an air-conditioned classroom, calmly teaching his students, Ollie's heart and respiration would have significantly increased, his tiny heart working even harder to maintain circulation with the sudden loss of water in the body. It's commonplace in children for them to have violent seizures just before death, though we can't be sure that was the case with Oliver Dill. Little Ollie's organs shut down one at a time, his tiny body unable to escape the heat of the car that his father is responsible for strapping him into.

I reached out to Dr. Dill, asking if there was anything he would like to include in the piece I was writing about the death of his son, and he responded with the following,

Dear Mentally Unstable Person:

The fact that you referred to my son’s death as a murder deems you unworthy of any type of dialogue. However, if you want a statement, here it is: you deserve the lowest rungs of hell for your statements and for claiming to be the “voice of Oliver.” Any further contact from you will be forwarded to the authorities as harassment.

Sent from his iPad, which I'm sure he didn't forget to remove from his car on the day he left his son to die a violent death. Neither Dill was arrested for the death of little Ollie, despite clear evidence of both parents being neglectful in the death of their son. It is the intention of the Dills to now tour, talking about the death of Oliver and what can be done to prevent hot car deaths. After getting away with the negligent death of Ollie, they will now profit from his death, and they do it publicly and with pride. Oliver's life counted too, and that his father is a professor and had a bleeding heart story should not negate his negligent homicide charge. It is my feeling that Jamie should also be held accountable for the death of her son. A simple phone call to the daycare could have very well saved the life of her young son. Oliver could have been spared the torture of his last moments on earth, and she should pay for her negligence.

Jennifer Ost: Anderson, Indiana

Twenty-seven-year-old Jennifer Ost gave birth to a baby boy on July 12, 2019, and she then signed out of the hospital against the advice of the medical staff. Ost was summoned to the Department of Child Services (DCS) on July 17, 2019, to answer as to why she chose to take her child out of the hospital against medical advice (AMA). While in the interview, Ost presented the child to medical staff to be evaluated and became belligerent and defiant with the staff at DCS, cussing and being extremely evasive with her answers. About two hours into the appointment with DCS, around 4:30 pm, a passerby reported a young boy in a car with the windows rolled up, watching a movie on a cell phone. Police responded to the scene and found the little boy watching the cell phone wet from sweat. The outside temperature was 86 degrees and the windows in the car were found to be up. The doors to the car were unlocked and the child was brought into the building. Ost claimed the child at once, proclaiming that the child simply didn't want to attend the appointment with her and the baby and chose to remain in the car. Jennifer Ost was arrested by Anderson, Indiana police, and charged with neglect of a dependent and endangering a dependent and booked into the Madison County Jail. Though both the child left in the car and her newborn were fine, with no long-term medical effects, the children were removed from her custody immediately. Ost was found guilty and sentenced to one year of in-home detention, which she completed in October 2020. She was also forced to pay a hefty fine and fees for the maintenance of her in-home detention program.

The differences in the cases are astounding when you consider that in two of them, no human or animal was hurt and two of them resulted in death. It is curious that a college professor and a nurse practitioner's actions were dismissed as a tragic accident while a homeless woman and a young single mother were held accountable, though all four persons were neglectful in their actions.

Homicide through neglect is still homicide. I will continue to demand the arrest and prosecution of Dr. Andrew Dill, as is required by law. It is my feeling that Jamie should also be held accountable for the death of her son. A simple phone call to the daycare could have very well saved the life of her young son. Oliver could have been spared the torture of his last moments on earth, and she should pay for her negligence. I will also continue to question why Nicole Engler was permitted to carry on as a medical professional in Roseburg, despite her fault in the death of her daughter. Oliver and Remington's lives counted too, and the fact that Ollie's father is a professor and Remington's mother is a nurse practitioner, each with a bleeding heart story should not negate their culpability in the death of their children.