Citation

Bushong LC, Diao Z. J. Forensic Sci. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, American Society for Testing and Materials, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1556-4029.14989

PMID

35103301

Abstract

This paper examines a pediatric hyperthermia homicide in which the decedent was placed into a room with only a diaper on and left unattended overnight. There were no furnishings in the room except for a 1500-W space heater and a stroller. The following morning, emergency personnel were summoned to the residence. A caretaker said the decedent playing normally 5 min before making the 911 call. The decedent's initial rectal temperature was 42.2°C (107.96 F). Law enforcement asked how long the child had to be exposed to a high temperature in order to induce fatal hyperthermia in an empty bedroom. The scene was reconstructed using the child's residence and the same heater. Environmental data were gathered over a 16-h period. The thermal parameters of the room and environment were analyzed using a lumped-element thermal model. These parameters were then fed into an adapted Gagge's two-node model of human thermal regulation, which provided a time-window of exposure necessary to elicit hyperthermia, which in this case, depending on certain variables, ranged from 45 min to 4 h.

Language: en

Keywords

basal metabolic rate; core body temperature; environmental mortality; fatal hyperthermia; heat injury; heat stroke death; human thermoregulation; medicolegal death investigation; pediatric homicide; pediatric hyperthermia