An “appalling” mum was playing pokies for five hours and left her 14-month-old son to suffer alone in a parked car as temperatures soared.
Kaija Millar was jailed for at a maximum of three years in the County Court of Victoria on Thursday after pleading guilty to negligently causing serious injury to her son in January 2020.
The 34-year-old woman drove to The Brook gaming venue at Point Cook, in Melbourne’s west, about 9.50am and left her son in the car with a bottle of water.
The windows were rolled up and there was no air-conditioning in the vehicle.
Millar played the pokies and bingo as her son sat in the car, and temperatures peaked at a scorching 37.5C.
“You knew what you were doing was wrong,” Judge Felicity Hampel said.
The first-time mother only went to check on her son just before 3pm and was met with a horrifying scene.
The baby was convulsing, foaming at the mouth and not responsive.
The injuries he suffered were life changing and “catastrophic”, the judge said.
After she found the infant in the car, Millar ran back into the venue and screamed for help.
“He’s going to die, he’s going to die, don’t die bubba,” she said and begged witnesses not to tell her husband what happened.
But in another shocking twist, Millar lied to police and paramedics about what happened to the boy.
At one point, she blamed the injuries on bushfire smoke in the area from deadly blazes in the state’s east.
The judge said the tragedy was no accident.
“This was not a tragic accident, something unforeseen, unanticipated and unavoidable,” she said.
“Your son suffered these injuries because you left him unattended and uncared for in that hot, windows closed, locked car in an open-air car park on a scorching day while you were inside for five hours.”
The behaviour was “appalling” and her actions left her only child with devastating consequences, the judge said.
Her son has been left seriously disabled and is now blind, struggles to speak and has cerebral palsy.
In her sentencing, Judge Hampel took into account the first-time mother struggled with parenthood, had postnatal depression, anxiety and was of low intelligence.
She was overwhelmed with the demands of motherhood and felt unsupported by her husband.
However, the judge said Millar knew what she did was wrong and still to some extent triexjmtzywd to minimise her actions.
“You’re a young woman whose circumstances are to some extent pathetic,” Judge Hampel said.
She must serve at least 12 months before being eligible for parole.
