A 36-year-old woman paralysed from the waist down died inside her overheating car after running out of fuel on a highway in Missouri, in the United States. Megan Oxley had been driving south from Kennett, Missouri, with her young nephew and niece in 2023.
Family's desperate search
Hours after the trio failed to return, family members grew concerned. Megan's sister Amber Jones told Kait8: “I just assumed that maybe she stayed with someone or maybe someone had come and got her.”
“But no one was able to get a hold of her, and the next morning, we were pretty panicked. We called the cops and got them involved.”
Discovery on Highway 412
The Dunklin County Sheriff's Department later located Megan's car south of Kennett, on Highway 412. They found her lifeless, stuck in the driver's seat, while the children were nowhere to be found.
Sheriff Bob Holder told Kait8: “There was indication that they were outside the vehicle, there were footprints outside the vehicle, they had been outside a little.”
Cause of death and children's rescue
Investigations concluded that Megan's car had run out of fuel and that she was stranded as temperatures rose above 100°F (almost 40°C). Both children were able to free themselves but could not help their aunt out of the car.
According to WWNYTV, the children were too young to fully grasp the danger Megan was in and were unable to get her to safety. They were later found and flown by helicopter to hospital, where they quickly recovered, as reported by their mother, Melissa Jones.
Heatstroke risk in vehicles
Melissa lamented her sister's passing, saying: “She was happy when I saw her last, she was smiling and talking to me. She was just so full of life.” She found solace in the fact that the children were found alive and safe after the “terrifying” ordeal.
People or animals left inside cars are at an extremely high risk of overheating, and an average of about 37 to 38 children die from vehicular heatstroke each year in the United States, with more than 1,000 total deaths recorded since 1998, reports the US National Safety Council.
