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Haahr files ‘Good Samaritan’ protection bill

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Rep. Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield, announced on the latest episode of This Week in Missouri Politics that he would file a piece of legislation called the “Rescue the Forgotten” bill.

The bill is designed to protect children left in hot cars during the summer where they are at risk of heatstroke when temperatures in cars can reach over 120 degrees.

Haahr’s bill would allow passersby to free a child left in a hot car without the risk of legal repercussion from the owner of the vehicle.

“Oftentimes, if you walk by a car and you see a child in the car and you reasonably believe that child is in danger, you may call 911, but it may take them too long to get there,” he told TWMP host Scott Faughn Sunday. “What we want to make sure is if you see a child in a car and you believe that child to be in danger, you can go ahead and try to break into that car to rescue that child without fear of it coming back on yourself.”

Haahr told one anecdote that showed the need for this legislation.

Screen Shot 2015-12-05 at 3.46.01 PM“An assistant manager at a store had to use a tire iron to break into a car to rescue a child that had been left behind,” Haahr said. “The child had been in the car for about 15 minutes, it was hot, it was over 100 degrees in the car. When the people came back to the car, the first thing they asked was, ‘Who’s going to pay for the damage to the vehicle?’ We need to make sure as a public policy in this state that those children are protected and that if you are a Good Samaritan and you’ve tempted to help that child, that we protect you.”

Haahr noted that around the United States average over 50 heat stroke fatalities a year from children, but Jan Null, a professor of climate science at San Jose University puts that number a bit lower at an average of 37 per year since 1998 – 53 percent of those are cases in where the child was forgotten.

Seventeen percent of those fatalities are intentional.

Null also notes that Missouri has had 14 child fatalities since that time due to vehicular heatstroke. The most recent of which was in Hickory County in Southwest Missouri when an infant died after each of the child’s parents thought the other had taken the child out of his car seat.

Haahr also stated he would like to include an emergency clause into the bill so it could take immediate effect before the summer of 2016.