ELKO (AP) - Authorities in Elko County are considering filing criminal charges against the father of a 5-month-old baby who apparently suffocated after being left alone in a car.
Geoffry Goldsborough told deputies he was in Montello on Wednesday working on building a house when his son, Garrett, became fussy so he put him in his infant seat in the car to take a nap, Elko County Undersheriff Doug Gailey said.
Because he wasn't driving, Goldsborough said he did not strap the baby in the infant seat or buckle the seat to the car's back seat.
When he returned to the car between 15 and 45 minutes later, the rear-facing infant seat apparently slid forward off the car seat. The child then apparently slid down head first and suffocated against the back of the front seat, Gailey said.
Gailey said the incident is being investigated as a crime, but no arrest has been made.
The infant's body has been sent to Washoe County for an autopsy to confirm the cause of death before District Attorney Gary Woodbury decides whether to pursue charges.
Gailey said it is not necessarily wrong to allow a child to nap in a car, but that it is important to tend to the child.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said in a recent study that from 2003-07 more than 43,000 infants in the United States required emergency room care after falling in car seats placed on elevated surfaces.
The study by Dr. Shital Parikh, a pediatric orthopedist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, showed most infants sustained head injuries, 64 percent, followed by 132 fractures and 24 radial head dislocations. Three deaths were reported.