A Jennings mother has been charged with second-degree murder after she left her 10-month-old daughter unattended inside a hot vehicle while she went to work.

Hannah Faith Cormier, 32, was arrested Sunday on charges of second-degree murder and cruelty to juveniles.

Cormier is accused of leaving the baby in the vehicle outside a Jennings restaurant where she works for several hours last Tuesday, according to police.

The baby, identified by family as Aryia, died Wednesday from heat stroke, according to Police Chief Danny Semmes.

Semmes said multiple interviews with witnesses, forensic evidence from electronic devices and statements from the suspect lead to the arrest on Sunday.

“This type of investigation is complicated and it’s not a cut and dry situation,” he said. “The reason we didn’t make an arrest till Sunday is because we had an unbelievable amount of interviews to conduct with both children and adults and forensic information we had to analyze over the course of the weekend to get to this result.”

“She was charged with second-degree murder, not negligent homicide. That is a direct result of the work that these detectives did on this case uncovering certain mitigating factors.”

He said the investigation is continuing despite Cormier’s arrest.

“This investigation is far from over,” Semmes said. “We’ve got a lot more evidence to analyze. We’re going to reanalyze the van and any other electronic devices that we can gather.”

Semmes said investigators have worked on the case non-stop since Tuesday afternoon.

Cormier told police she had been called into work and inadvertently left the child in the car while she was inside. She did not realize the baby was still in the back seat until she went to leave work nearly two hours later, Semmes said.

Upon finding the baby unresponsive in the back seat, Cormier took the baby to Ochsner American Legion Hospital in Jennings. Hospital staff worked to obtain a pulse and stabilize the baby before transporting it to an out-of-town hospital in critical condition.

Temperatures in Jennings on Tuesday were in the mid-to-upper 90s with triple-digit heat indices.

 

The Jeff Davis Parish District Attorney’s Office and Department of Children and Family Services assisted Jennings police in the investigation.