MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The viral video showing Katlin Brandon’s three kids sitting in a hot car with one window halfway down has been shared over 14,000 times.
“What was she thinking?” resident Deborah Hill said after watching the video.
The mother told us on Sunday that she was having car troubles, so she went inside of Hibbett Sports to ask for help.
“I went in the store for two minutes. I never left my eye from the car, and I stood at the door trying to look for somebody for help. I couldn’t find anybody. So I was going out, some girl walked in and started cursing me out,” Brandon said.
But surveillance video shows otherwise.
Brandon could be seen browsing the store. She even walked right past an employee.
That employee told us he asked her if she needed any help. But she said no and that she was looking for an outfit.
Brandon was then approached by a concerned woman.
“Why you leave your kids in the car with your dumb {expletive} like that?” she asks in the video. “Don’t be dumb.”
“I was just coming right back,” Brandon said.
“{Expletive} that,” the woman responds. “Go get them {expletive} kids. All these {expletive} kids dying every {expletive} where.”
After she was approached by the woman recording video, the Hibbett Sports employee said Brandon made a call to police and went back into the store a second time with her kids still in the car. But this time the air conditioning was on.
“It’s nothing more important than the kids. And to leave them in the car like that at all, is uncalled for,” Hill said.
According to the National Safety Council, 43 children died last year after being left in hot cars, and all incidents were preventable.
Brandon says after the backlash from concerned citizens, and after a talk with police, she won’t do this again.
“I understand exactly what the police said. Whether it’s hot or cold, never leave your child in a motor vehicle. I understand now.”
