Grandmother Barbara Pemberton arrested after baby dies from heatstroke in her car

A grandmother in Georgia has been charged with second-degree murder after allegedly leaving her 13-month-old grandson in the car with the heat running for five hours while she visited some friends.

Barbara Michelle Pemberton, 47, has also been charged with child cruelty, after the little boy was found dead in Rossville, Walker County, on Tuesday.

Pemberton told police she was watching the baby, Shadoe Braxton Pate, for her son while his wife worked, but when she arrived at her friend's house he was asleep in the back of her Ford Focus.

Instead of waking him, she left the car running with heat on while she went inside the house, according to The Times Free Press.

However, when she retued to the car about five hours later, about 4.20 p.m., Shadoe was dead. 

Though Pemberton and her friends conducted CPR on Shadoe, and though paramedics rushed him to the hospital, the infant was pronounced dead at Hutcheson Medical Center. 

Despite being a cold January day, police say that the combination of the sun pouring in through the window and the blast of heat gave the little boy heatstroke, which subsequently killed him.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted an autopsy and concluded Thursday that Shadoe died of hyperthermia.

Investigators believe the temperature in the car rose to around 100 degrees by the time Pemberton checked on Shadoe.

'The time got away from her,' Sheriff Steve Wilson told The Times Free Press.

'At the same time, the people she was visiting indicated that they prodded her two or three times to go check on the child. 

'There's not been a reasonable explanation (for ignoring that advice).'

Wilson said there was no outward evidence that Pemberton or her friends had been drinking or were on drugs. 

Pemberton is being held in the Walker County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

Last year, 24 children nationwide died of heatstroke after they were left in cars, The Atlanta Joual-Constitution reported.

Predominantly the cases occurred in the summer.