Police: 2-year-old found in car in Mesa parking lot

A 2-year-old girl was said to be OK after being pulled from a hot car Wednesday outside a north Mesa grocery store, authorities said.

The apparent accident, as police are calling it, was the third such incident of its kind in the Valley in little more than a week:

>> Officials on Monday removed an unattended 2-month-old boy from a vehicle in Tempe.

>> And a 2 1/2-year-old boy died after being left in his family's car for more than two hours on April 20.

Police said a mother had four children with her -- three of her own and a friend's child -- when she went into a Bashas' on Wednesday afternoon and left her 2-year-old daughter in the vehicle.

The store manager alerted police to the situation at Mesa Drive and Brown Road and firefighters were quick to arrive, according to Detective Steve Flores, a Mesa police spokesman.

It wasn't clear how long the girl had been inside the vehicle by the time someone noticed her.

Flores said Mesa firefighters evaluated the girl, who appeared to be fine, but she was transported to a local hospital as a precaution.

Police did not arrest the mother, unlike the parents in the Tempe and Phoenix cases.

James Koryor was arrested April 21 on suspicion of manslaughter and child endangerment in connection with the hot-car death of his 2 1/2-year-old son, Alpha Koryor. Police said the man was intoxicated when he left Alpha in the car parked in front of the family's west Phoenix home.

And Suhaylah Shamsiddeen, 26, was arrested Monday on suspicion of child abuse after her 2-month-old son was pulled from her car in a Tempe Whole Foods parking lot. Police said Shamsiddeen said she purposely covered the boy with a blanket and left him in the car while she went into the store to buy formula and other items.

Hot-car incidents happen most often when there are multiple children and parents get distracted, according to Sgt. Trent Crump, a Phoenix police spokesman.

"Have somebody that's designated to make sure the child's in the car safely -- including the car seat," Crump said last week. "Make sure that every time the car stops and is turned off, that the child ... is out of the car safely."