Parents charged after child found dead in hot car

Published 12:37 pm Monday, August 10, 2020

Two north Alabama parents face criminal charges after their 3-year-old child was found dead in a hot car Sunday.

Dakota Heath Fowler, 20, and Brandi Michelle Banks, 21, from Franklin County have been charged with manslaughter. The parents are held in the Franklin County jail without bail set, records show.

A Franklin County Sheriff’s Office news release said the couple’s 3-year-old son was found unresponsive in a car in the tiny northwest Alabama town of Hodges on Sunday around 4 p.m. Resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful, and the boy was declared dead

Franklin County officials report that Fowler and Banks said that they put their 3-year-old boy to bed around midnight Saturday. When they awoke Sunday around 3 p.m. they found the boy in their car.

The child’s body was sent in for a forensics autopsy and that the case remains under investigation.