6-year-old girl kills baby brother with seat belt while dad was in store, Texas cops say

A Houston man has been charged with child abandonment after police there say he left his 6-year-old daughter alone in the car with her 1-year-old brother.

When he came back out to the car, his daughter told him she “did something bad,” according to a probable cause affidavit filed by Houston police, and he found his son unresponsive in the car, with a seat belt wrapped around the infant’s neck.

In order to protect the girl’s identity, McClatchy is not releasing the name of the father in this case.

Her father told police in an interview that he had been inside the Family Thrift Center along Interstate 10, just east of town, for 30-45 minutes after strapping both kids in their car seats to wait for him, the affidavit says.

But police say surveillance footage taken from the store contradicts that — showing the car parked in the same spot for at least an hour and 40 minutes. The dad also later admitted there were no car seats in the car, the affidavit says.

The girl told police that her 1-year-old brother started crying as they waited for their father, so she started to play with him, and it made him stop, according to the affidavit. But when she stopped playing with him, he began to cry again, and when he did, she started wrapping one of the car’s seat belts around her brother.

The kids’ father attempted CPR on his son and called 911, according to KTRK.

The boy was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy performed by the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide, by strangulation.

The father’s bond had not been set as of Monday afternoon.