Press

JENNINGS – Charges have been reduced for a Jennings mother arrested after leaving her 10-month-old daughter alone in a hot car for several hours after being called in to work.

Hannah Faith Cormier, 32, was indicted on negligent homicide earlier this month by a Jeff Davis Parish grand jury.

Cormier was initially arrested Aug. 18 on charges of second-degree murder and cruelty to juveniles.

 

She was released from jail on a reduced bond of $10,000 on Wednesday following the grand jury indictment. Bond was initially set at $1 million at the time of her arrest.

Cormier is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 28 in the 31st Judicial District Court.

The mother is accused of leaving her daughter, Ayria, unattended in a hot vehicle parked outside a local fast food restaurant where she worked for two hours.

Police said the baby later died from heat stroke..

Cormier told police she was called in to work and accidentally left the baby unattended in the car for several hours while she was inside. She did not realize her daughter was still in the back seat until she went to leave work and found her unresponsive.

Cormier took the baby to Ochsner American Legion Hospital in Jennings where she had a body temperature of 109 degrees.

Hospital staff worked to obtain a pulse and stabilized the baby until she was transported to an out-of-town hospital in critical condition and later died.

Temperatures in Jennings on the day of the incident were in the mid-to-upper 90s with triple-digit heat indices. Investigators determined that temperatures inside the vehicle may have reached 140 to 150 degrees.