Florida parents charged in daughter’s hot-car death

An 18-month-old Florida girl “baked to death” after police said her parents left her alone in a car all night in 105-degree heat after returning home from a Fourth of July party where they drank alcohol and smoked marijuana.

Joel and Jazmine Rondon, both 33, from Lakeland, have been arrested on a charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child in what Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd described as their daughter’s “torturous” hot-car death, which he blamed on “negligence and drug use.”

The couple went to a party on Tuesday with their three children, all under the age of 9, and stayed out until nearly 3 a.m. the next morning, cops said.

While at the party, detectives said both parents drank alcohol and smoked marijuana – and the dad also allegedly used meth.

When they returned home in the early hours of Wednesday, Jazmine reportedly told her husband to bring their 18-month-old daughter inside, while she took care of their two older kids, ages 6 and 8.

Joel told investigators one of the car doors was open at the time, the station CBS 12 reported. He brought trays of food inside the house, and when he went back outside, he saw that all four doors to their Hyundai Elantra were closed and assumed his wife had already brought the toddler inside herself.

“They got the food in the house, but they didn’t get the baby in the house,” Judd said during a press conference Thursday.

Joel and Jazmine later went to bed, with neither spouse asking the other about their young daughter’s whereabouts before falling asleep.

Joel woke up at 10 a.m. and spent an hour getting ready for work. Around 11 a.m., the dad-of-three asked his eldest to go “check on the baby” in the bedroom, but was told that the little girl was not there.

After searching the house for the toddler, Joel went out to the car parked in the driveway beneath the blazing sun and found his daughter unresponsive in the backseat, still strapped into her car seat.

“It is brutally hot for everyone under the best of circumstances and then this child is shut in the car, obviously with no movement of air, with it becoming hotter and hotter and hotter as the morning went on,” Judd said.

Joel rushed back inside and woke up his wife. Together, the parents rushed their child to Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center, where the sheriff said it became evident that the youngster had “suffered a torturous death.”

At around 2:30 p.m. — hours after she was removed from the car — the toddler’s internal body temperature still measured at 104.4 degrees, Judd said.

An autopsy found the tot died from hyperthermia due to being left in the car, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.

Jazmine later tested positive for alcohol and marijuana, and Joel tested positive for alcohol, marijuana and methamphetamine, according to the authorities.

The pair were booked into the county jail Thursday. The sheriff said both were remorseful and allegedly admitted to partying with drugs and booze.

“I think the real remorse will be tonight when they’re sitting in the county jail, in an air conditioned environment, thinking ‘it’s nice and cool here when my baby baked to death because of my negligence and my use of drugs,’” Judd said.

Joel has a lengthy rap sheet dating back to 2003 when he was 15 years old. His extensive criminal history includes charges ranging from criminal mischief and resisting arrest, to aggravated assault and attempted murder.

His most recent run-in with the law occurred in Feb. 2023, when he was arrested on a warrant for carrying a concealed weapon, and possession of meth and drug paraphernalia.

The Rondons’ two surviving children are currently staying with relatives, officials said.