A Texas mother has been charged with felony murder three months after she left her nine-year-old daughter in a hot car for eight hours while at work.

Gbemisola Akayinode, 36, was arrested on October 17 and booked into the Harris County Jail in the Houston metropolitan area for the death of her daughter, Oluwasikemi Akayinode.

The mother drove to her shift at a mineral plant in Galena Park on Mayo Shell Road with her daughter in the back seat on July 1.

Akayinode parked the Toyota Camry to begin working at 6am, leaving her nine-year-old inside with some water and the windows partially down, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

The sheriff said Akayinode had also left a shade up in the front window of the car, making it difficult for passersby to see inside.

When the mother came to check on Oluwasikemi around 2pm after a full shift, she found the little girl unresponsive and called the police.

CPR was started on Oluwasikemi, who was then taken to nearby Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital where she was pronounced dead. The medical examiner's office ruled her death a homicide as a result of hyperthermia.

The temperature in the area that day reached 96F, according to AccuWeather. A satellite view of the mineral plant shows that the parking lot has little shade.

According to a hot car calculator, temperatures inside the vehicle under the conditions that day could have reached 164F.

Gbemisola Akayinode, 36, was charged with felony murder after going to work and leaving her nine-year-old daughter in a hot car for eight hours, which killed the little girl

The car was left in a sunny parking lot in the middle of the summer. The temperature outside reached 96F that day, and it would have been significantly hotter in the car

Within just 40 minutes, the car could have reached about 115F, and the child's body temperature could have reached close to 106F after less than three hours. She was in the car for at least eight hours.

Dr. Anthony Arredondo of Texas Children's Hospital told KHOU11: 'Once you start getting to a body core temperature higher than 102, 104, or higher, that can cause significant damage to the brain, organs. So it's hard to say what time frame, the longer they are in there, the worse it is.'

Oluwasikemi was one of four children who died in hot cars in the first two weeks of July in Texas.

That surpassed the total of three hot car deaths recorded in the state throughout all of 2024, which led the Texas Department of State Health Services to release an official statement urging vigilance.

According to the statement, suffering heatstroke in a car is the second-leading cause of vehicle-related deaths in children under 15 after car crashes.

According to the Kids and Car Safety National Database, Texas is the state with the highest number of hot car deaths recorded since 1990, at 160 total cases. That is significantly higher than the state with the second highest number of cases, which is Florida with a total of 122 hot car deaths.

An aerial view of the facility shows how the parking lot of the mineral plant where Akayinode was working and has almost no shade

Last month, a mother in Texas claimed that while she slept, her two children died in a hot car after they made their way out of their house and into the vehicle. Police said there were 'inconsistencies' in the story.

In August, another Texas mother 'intentionally' left her 15 month old in a hot car while she worked and the baby died.

In order to prevent hot car deaths, the Texas Department of State Health Services recommends never leaving a child in a car alone, even if the air conditioner is running.

It also recommends always checking the backseat of your car when exiting, never assuming that it would not happen to your child and to call 911 immediately if you see a child alone inside or around a car.

Mom left daughter, 9, in boiling car to die for entire work day