David Diamond received a voicemail on his work phone on the last Sunday of last July.
It was from Juan Rodriguez, a New City father whose 1-year-old twins died from heatstroke two days before, after he had left them in the back of his car after he forgot to drop them off at daycare.
Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, had been studying the phenomenon of parents forgetting children in cars for the past 15 years.
"I called him back immediately," Diamond said on Wednesday, the day after Rodriguez, 39, had pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment, misdemeanors, in Bronx Criminal Court, in the deaths of his babies, Luna and Phoenix.
Diamond recalled the emotional call that day. "I could just sense how he had a combination of being so distraught and so depressed," he said. "He needed my help."
Diamond explained his research, which shows how the brain can go on autopilot during routine tasks — like driving children to daycare on the way to work — but that an interruption in this subconscious memory system can cause a false memory that makes one believe the routine task was completed, as it usually happens.
"I shared with him how I have talked to parents in this situation for 15 years," Diamond said, and explained this kind of tragedy had happened hundreds of times.
"He had no idea," Diamond said. "It helped him to hear how he wasn't alone."
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The researcher has testified in many court cases, and was willing to testify for Rodriguez.
Diamond said the outcome of Rodriguez' case, with no jail time and a dismissal after a year, was better than some. He knew of people who were sentenced to decades in prison for what he called an unintentional tragedy.
But he still had hoped Rodriguez would have gone to trial and been found not guilty.
"I don't believe he committed a crime. This is part of being human, we're capable of making catastrophic memory errors," Diamond said. "This can happen to anyone."
Deadly mistake
Rodriguez worked at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. A veteran, Rodriguez had attended University at Albany, and has a master's degree in social work. He was known as a doting father to two older children, and the three little ones, a 4-year-old and the twins.
He lived with his wife, Marissa, and family in a standard New City ranch, with a fenced in yard where the family had just hosted a blowout first birthday for the twins.
The morning of July 26, Rodriguez drove to work with the three little ones in tow. He dropped off the 4-year-old at a separate daycare first, a standard pattern. Then he headed to work. When he left his office around 4 p.m., he got in the car and started driving home. That is when he realized his deadly mistake.
In 2019, there were 53 hot-car deaths in the U.S. So far in 2020, there have been five hot-car deaths, according to KidsAndCars.org, a nonprofit that advocates for legislation that would detect and alert drivers if someone has been left along in a vehicle.
Change in routine is a hallmark of the phenomenon in which parents or caregivers forget a baby in a vehicle.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, vehicular heatstroke is one of the leading causes of non-crash-related fatalities among children.
According to a 2014 study by Safe Kids Worldwide, 11 percent of parents admit to forgetting their child in a car; nearly 1 in 4 parents of children age 3 and younger have admitted this has happened.
Measures to save kids
Marissa Rodriguez has stood by her husband, even appearing on the "Dr. Phil" TV show to explain what happened to her family and advocated for measures to keep other children safe from a phenomenon some call "forgotten baby syndrome."
When he was first arrested by the NYPD, Rodriguez was placed on suicide watch. Throughout the trial, Rodriguez showed remorse and was visibly upset, many times wiping away tears in the courtroom. His hands were always interlocked with his wife's.
Diamond was on that "Dr. Phil" episode with Marissa Rodriguez.
They advocated for alert systems in vehicles that would make sure a person checked the back seat to avoid leaving a child behind.
Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsAndCars.org, said that Congress is progressing on legislation that would mandate new cars have such systems on board.
Diamond said all cars should be retrofitted. "We have so much technology in our lives, he said, but people hesitate to use these kinds of detection systems. He said that to buy one, people would have to admit to themselves that this could happen to them.
Fennell said that kind of thinking is “the biggest mistake you could ever make. You need to protect yourself against that because we’re human.”
Diamond also supports legislation that would mandate daycare centers call if a child is not dropped off.
While many states do not mandate such calls, one Texas family has made it their mission to have daycare operations sign what they call Ray Ray's Pledge, which encourages daycare centers to contact a parent if a child is not dropped off. It's named for Sophia Rayne Cavaliero, known as Ray Ray, who died in 2011 at age 1 after her father left her in his truck after he was distracted by a detour on his way to work and his memory filled in a daycare dropoff that never happened.
'This can happen to anyone'
Diamond, who thinks daily about the phenomenon and the brain processes at work, had his own close call.
"The first time driving with grandchild, she was in backseat," Diamond recalled of the incident that occurred five years ago. "I completely lost awareness." He got out the the car and was headed into the mall, forgetting that the 6-month-old was in the back.
Luckily, his wife was with him. She said to him: "did you forget something?"
"I had no idea what she was talking about," he said. "As soon as she mentioned the baby, a sense of horror came over me. Had I been alone, I would have been a statistic. I would have been the very thing I study."
Nancy Cutler writes about People & Policy. Click here for her latest stories. Follow her on Twitter at @nancyrockland. Support local journalism; go to lohud.com/specialoffer to find out how.
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