CARROLLTON, Ga. — A father was arrested Friday in the deaths of his 15-month-old twin girls, who were left in a hot car the night before outside Atlanta. The man and his neighbors frantically tried to revive the toddlers with ice packs in a baby pool, but they were too far gone, authorities said.
Asa North, 24, of Carrollton, is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless conduct, Carroll County jail records show.
A neighbor, Stephanie Anderson, said emergency vehicles crowded the street at about 6 p.m. after someone discovered the twins unresponsive in the back seat of an SUV parked in front of the family’s home,
“The neighbors heard some screaming — I guess coming from the father — and saw him running around back with the two children,” Carrollton police Capt. Chris Dobbs told Atlanta television station CBS 46.
Arriving officers found people trying to cool the girls off in a baby pool. “One of the neighbors got some ice packs out of the freezer and carried it out there,” Dobbs said.
The twins were taken to a hospital, where they were pronounced dead. Autopsies were being done at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab, GBI spokesman Scott Dutton said Friday morning.
Police said the mother was in Atlanta at the time.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether North has an attorney who could be contacted for comment.
The girls are the 25th and 26th children to die this year in hot vehicles, more than double the number by this point last summer, said Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsAndCars.org, a group that tracks such deaths each year. By this date in 2015, 12 children had died in hot cars, Fennell said in an email Thursday night.
Neighbors said it’s normally quiet in twins’ six-unit brick building, on a dead-end street in a modest middle-class area 45 miles west of Atlanta. On Friday morning, however, police tape was still up, with satellite TV trucks parked out front.
The twins died as prosecutors in another metro Atlanta county prepare for the murder trial of Justin Ross Harris, 35, who is accused of intentionally leaving his toddler son to die in a hot SUV for about seven hours in 2014.
Harris’ trial was moved to the coastal Georgia city of Brunswick after a judge agreed with defense lawyers that an impartial jury could not be found in the Atlanta area. The trial is expected to begin in September.
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