Keri and Larry Volmert were excited for the leap day in 2016. It meant they got an extra day in February to spend with their beloved 17-month-old daughter Sammie. As they put her to bed on February 28, her parents kissed her and told her that they loved her just like they did every other night. They watched as their beautiful daughter drifted off to sleep. Little did they know but this would be the last time the Volmerts saw their beloved Sammie alive.
In the morning, Keri got up early and then went to the kitchen to start her routine. It was Larry’s morning to check on Sammie and get her ready for the day.
While she was preparing some food for breakfast, Keri heard her husband scream. He kept yelling her name. This fearful behavior was not normal for Larry.
Keri knew something was wrong. She wanted to run, but he body had frozen. She was terrified.
Larry kept screaming.
“Keri! Keri! Keri!”
He then ran out of Sammie’s room with his daughter in his arms. She was lifeless. Then he spoke the words that no parent deserves to hear.
“I think Sammie is dead.”
It destroyed Keri.
The family performed CPR on the baby. They rushed her to the emergency room. But doctors could not do anything for the adorable baby. She was pronounced dead 55 minutes later.
Sammie was not another victims of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS. She died from hyperthermia. Her body temperature was too hot.
Ker and Larry had set her bedroom temperature to 72 degrees. But their heating system failed, and when they went to check on her in the morning, the room’s temperature had risen to over 100 degrees.
“As soon as I got to the top of the stairs, it was very warm — I mean, hot,” Larry said. “I ran to her room, opened her door, and found her passed away.”
Larry and Keri had their bedroom on the first floor of their house. And their children were housed on the second floor. Different temperature control systems functioned on each floor. And this meant that Keri and Larry were totally oblivious that Sammie’s bedroom temperature had risen out of control.
Babies and small children are unable to regulate their body temperatures as well as adults. This meant that Sammie did not cry or wake up because of her body’s rising temperature.
“She did not make a noise at all,” Keri said. “We always heard her if she cried.”
The death of Sammie was all a colossal mistake.
Her three-year-old brother, Jackson, happened to sleep in his parents’ room that night. If he had been upstairs, he might have succumbed to hyperthermia as well.
Experts admit that it is extremely rare for children to die of hyperthermia at home. This type of death comes much more frequently when parents leave their babies in hot cars in the sun.
Although it is rare, it does happen. When Keri opened up about her tragedy on Facebook, other parents contacted her to tell her they experienced the same tragedy.
“There is a cheap temperature monitor I could have had-would have had If I had heard of even one instance where a child could die by a heater not turning off like it is supposed to,” Keri wrote on her Remembering Sammie Joyce Volmert Facebook page. “We want others (especially those with two-story homes) to hear Sammie’s story so that children can be protected and other families spared from the horrific grief we are forced to endure each day.”
