Tommy Dean Platero, 34, a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources employee based in Vernal, was charged July 30, 2026, in 8th District Court with child abuse homicide, a second-degree felony, after his 7-month-old daughter died following roughly two and a half hours alone in a parked car on July 28.
Public records and law-enforcement statements identify Platero as the infant’s father and the person who drove her to Uintah Basin Medical Center after discovering her unresponsive. No name, statement, or investigative status has been released for the child’s mother or any other caregiver, and Vernal Police have not publicly identified the make, model, or year of the vehicle.
Where it happened and what the affidavit says
According to a Vernal Police booking affidavit quoted in court coverage, Platero left a Vernal residence intending to take the girl to a local daycare, then “forgot to take the child to the daycare” and instead drove to an area on north Vernal Avenue inside city limits. Fox 13 reported that location as the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Northeast Region Office parking lot, where Platero works.
Affidavit timelines place him entering a building about 12:51 p.m. and running back to the vehicle about 3:30 p.m.—about 150 minutes later. Police say the infant remained restrained in a car seat, unable to free herself, in a vehicle that was shut off with the windows up.
When Platero returned, investigators say he found the child not blinking or breathing, with foam at her mouth, and drove her to the Uintah Basin Hospital emergency department, where she was pronounced dead. The girl’s recorded internal body temperature was 109 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heat on July 28 and the car’s interior
The affidavit states the outside temperature was approximately 92 degrees Fahrenheit while the child was inside the closed car. Investigators later estimated the vehicle’s interior temperature at the hospital between 131 and 151 degrees Fahrenheit. Tracking site NoHeatStroke.org, maintained by researchers who catalog U.S. pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths, lists the Vernal case on July 28, 2026, as a 7-month-old girl with an ambient temperature of 94 degrees—consistent with a hot late-July day in the Uintah Basin.
No publicly released police document identifies the vehicle type. Coverage uniformly refers only to “a vehicle” or “a car” left shut off with windows closed.
Father’s employment, charges, and what comes next
DWR spokesperson Faith Jolley confirmed that on July 28 the Vernal Police Department contacted the agency about an incident involving a DWR employee and said the agency was assisting police while treating the matter as a personnel issue under human-resources policy. “We are absolutely heartbroken for all those involved in the incident, and our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time,” Jolley said.
Platero was booked into the Uintah County Jail after his arrest. Initial booking paperwork described the allegation as reckless child abuse homicide; formal charging documents filed July 30 list child abuse homicide as a second-degree felony. An initial court appearance was set for the Monday after charges were filed.
The infant was transported to the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner, which will determine official cause and manner of death; Vernal Police said the investigation remains ongoing.
Other recent Utah hot-car deaths
KidsAndCars/NoHeatStroke trackers counted the Vernal infant as the first reported pediatric hot-car death in Utah in 2026 and among roughly the first 16 such U.S. deaths that year as of late July.
Utah’s most recent prior case was Sept. 1, 2025, in Veyo, where a 3-year-old boy was found dead after being left in a vehicle outside an apartment following a family shopping trip. In late October 2025, Washington County prosecutors charged the boy’s mother, Celine Ashley Switlick, 29, with one count of child abuse homicide with criminal negligence, a second-degree felony.
Nationally, researchers estimate roughly three dozen children under 15 die each year in hot vehicles; a child’s body temperature can rise three to five times faster than an adult’s.
As of early August 2026, no public Utah court docket excerpt or police release had named the Vernal infant, identified her mother, or disclosed the vehicle’s make and model. Those details, along with the medical examiner’s findings and Platero’s next court hearings, will shape what prosecutors can prove beyond the affidavit’s timeline of a daycare drop-off that never happened and nearly two and a half hours in a closed car on a 90-degree Vernal afternoon.
