A horrifying failure of state “oversight” led to the death of a 3-year-old boy after he was abandoned for five hours inside a sweltering vehicle by a child welfare contractor hired by the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR).
Ke’Torrius “KJ” Starks Jr. was taken from his family and placed into the care of a foster system that was supposed to protect him.
He was picked up from daycare at 9:00 a.m. for a court-ordered supervised visit with his biological father, which ended at 11:30 a.m., according to People.
Instead of returning him to daycare, he was allegedly abandoned in a hot car for five hours while a DHR contract worker ran errands for herself—including picking up food for her family and shopping at a tobacco store, according to the family’s attorney.
The incident took place Tuesday in Birmingham as temperatures soared above 100 degrees.
The heat index reached 108°F, meaning the temperature inside the vehicle likely exceeded a deadly 150°F, according to attorney Courtney French.
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French says that the worker, who was employed to do transport through Covenant Services Inc., went Tuesday morning to pick KJ up from a child care center to bring him for a supervised visit with his dad.
Afterward, however, the worker did not bring the boy back to his center and instead decided “to run numerous personal errands with KJ still in a car seat in the back,” French claims. The stops including getting food and going to a tobacco shop.
The employee then went home but KJ was left in the car, according to French.
“The safety net that should have been in place to protect KJ and others like him is what caused his death,” French says. “So the very system that is in place for his protection was the system that led to his death — and that’s what’s so tragic about this.”
DHR says, “A child in DHR custody was being transported by a contract provider,” and confirmed the provider has fired the employee—yet refuses to disclose identity, safety protocols, or any meaningful accountability, citing confidentiality laws.
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