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MERRIAM, Kan. – A video of a woman in Merriam desperately trying to save a child stuck inside a hot car, by breaking a widow, has gone viral. In it, she tries using multiple items to break the glass, without success, until a bystander with a truck hitch finally breaks it for her. They then rescue the young child inside.
Now a local glass and tint shop is sharing tips on how to easily break the glass in an emergency.
“It was in the parking lot just down the road here, and they were trying to break a window out because there was a baby inside,” said Nick Baldi, the owner of Auto Glass and Tint Shop in Merriam, Kansas, who was watching the news and saw Sarah Oropeza trying to save a child stuck in a hot car.
“What`s going through my mind is ‘how much she had to beat the glass to break it,’” added Baldi. “She was trying to beat it and break it and probably hit it ten or twelve different times.”
Baldi says glass manufacturers make it strengthened on purpose for safety reasons.
“I think everybody was watching it and thinking what it would take to actually break that window out,” Baldi said. “She was going by instinct, and her first instinct was to grab something and just try to break the center of the piece of glass.”
Local police have responded to incidents of three different children being left in hot cars over the past few days, so Baldi invited FOX 4 out Tuesday for tips on how to break a car window to save a child.
“You want to go toward the edges of the glass, which is the weakest point of the glass,” Baldi said. “The hardest part of that glass is in the dead center.”
He says choose a window as far from the child as possible.
“When it shatters, you`re looking at thousands of pieces of glass, and it`s just going to fly everywhere,” he said.
A glass tech, Steve Rogers, says you’ll see a difference with tinted windows.
“When it`s tinted, the glass will hold together and you can push the whole window out at that point,” said Rogers.
Baldi says you can use a hammer, a screw driver, and anything with a sharp edge.
“So if you had a claw hammer, you`d actually try to break it with the claw side of it versus the hammer side of it,” Baldi said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says your car can warm to dangerous, life-threatening levels in just 10 minutes, something to keep in mind when you`re out with your kids.
