Anaheim mother was drunk, passed out when daughter died locked in hot car, prosecutors say

An Anaheim mother is facing involuntary manslaughter and child abuse charges after prosecutors allege she was found drunk and passed out in a locked vehicle along with her three-year-old daughter who had died in the extreme heat.

Sandra Hernandez-Cazares, 42, was found with the body of her toddler, Ily Ruiz, on the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 6, in a Ford Expedition parked on a residential neighborhood in the 1300 block of North Fashion Lane, in front of their apartment building.

Hernandez-Cazares was taken to a hospital, where her blood alcohol content was found to be .30 percent, more than four times the legal limit for driving, according to a Orange County District Attorney’s Office statement.

Earlier in the day, staff at an elementary school attended by Hernandez-Cazares’ 5-year-old son called the mother’s family members, reporting that no one had picked the boy up from kindergarten, according to the DA statement.

Family members found the SUV, saw Hernandez-Cazares and her daughter unconscious inside the vehicle and broke out a window, prosecutors said.

The family members, as well as paramedics, tried to resuscitate the toddler. But prosecutors say the girl had been dead for several hours before she and her mother were found inside the locked car.

The outside temperature at the time the girl and her mother were discovered was more than 104 degrees, prosecutors said, and empty alcohol bottles were found in the SUV.

Family members in a GoFundMe posting described the girl as “a beautiful and innocent soul with a very loving and bubbly personality.” They added that it has been “unbearable and hard to wrap our minds around” what happened to the girl and that they “don’t wish this excruciating pain upon anyone.”

According to the OCDA office, Hernandez-Cazares had previously advocated for stricter DUI laws in another state, after her then 5-year-old and 9-year-old sons were run over and killed by a drunk driver while sleeping in a tent during a 2012 camping trip in South Dakota.

“The unimaginable pain of having your 5-year-old and 9-year-old sons killed by a drunk driver is something from which you can never recover,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “Anyone who has suffered such a devastating tragedy knows the ripple effects of grief may be able to be hidden, but the heartbreak of losing your children will never go away…

“A mother who was robbed of the chance to see two of her sons grow up because of the selfish decision of a stranger will have to live with the fact she will never get to see her little girl grow up because of the choices she made,” Spitzer added.

Hernandez-Cazares is scheduled to appear in court for an arraignment on Oct. 1. She has not yet entered a plea, court records show. If convicted, she faces up to 12 years in prison.