Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - A Des Moines police officer credits a 3-year-old with saving the life of his brother, who was locked in the family’s sport utility vehicle.
Juan Santillan was locked inside the vehicle on Des Moines’ east side while his mother slept, unaware that her children had left the house.
Brandy Santillan, 23, said she worked until 1 a.m. and woke at 6 a.m. to change diapers, fill baby bottles and see her husband off to work. She then took a nap.
As she dozed, 3-year-old Roberto helped 18-month-old Juan out of his crib. They worked their way past a couple of locks on a sliding glass door and figured out a gate latch on the chain-link fence in the back yard.
Using a remote locking device, Roberto managed to unlock the door to the vehicle.
He unzipped a protective covering over the vehicle and climbed inside. Juan followed.
It was about 10 a.m. The outdoor temperature had already reached 80 degrees.
“I think I was just waking up when Roberto came running inside, saying his brother was locked in the car with the remote,” Brandy Santillan said.
She tried to bash in a window with a rock. Then she flagged down garbage collector Brian McKenzie.
“She asked me if I knew how to break a window,” McKenzie said. “I said, ‘Yeah.”’
McKenzie used the same rock to break in, cutting his hand.
Juan “was all sweaty” but otherwise fine, his mother said. Santillan guessed that the child had been in the vehicle “a few minutes...but it was so hot.”
Roberto was the hero in the eyes of police Officer Jack Brunotte.
“I get shaky just thinking about what might have happened if he hadn’t told his mother where his brother was,” Brunotte said.