Benjamin Seitz died three and half weeks ago in a Ridgefield parking lot. He was just 15-months-old.
The case, at least to the public’s eye, stalled weeks ago, but the toddler’s family is moving forward.
This week Lindsey Rogers-Seitz, Benjamin’s mother, started a blog called “The Gift of Ben.” It outlines her mission to better educate the public about child heatstroke prevention, but she said awareness isn’t enough.
“Honestly I never paid any attention to it. I mean, we’re the all-American family, and we never in our lives understood how this happens,” Rogers-Seitz told CNN.
Police said Benjamin’s father left him in a hot car for an extended period of time while he went inside to work.
Rogers-Seitz suggests the campaign include a round table discussion with representatives from automobile and car seat industries, child safety advocates, engineers, doctors, etc., to figure out solutions to stop child heatstroke deaths.
She also thinks there needs to be more funding for products that could detect a child in the rear seat when a driver leaves the car. Rogers-Seitz wants to make those devices a mandatory feature in cars, admitting that she probably wouldn’t have thought to purchase one.
She said she included these ideas in a piece of draft legislation she’s calling “Benjamin’s Bill.”
The Medical Examiner hasn’t confirmed Benjamin’s cause of death, and Ridgefield investigators haven’t said if they’ll charge his father, Kyle, with anything either.
There’s no indication that Kyle Seitz authored anything on “The Gift of Ben” blog, but at one point Rogers-Seitz quotes him: “In my husband’s words, ‘We can’t let another family feel this pain.’”