Video of Texas Dad Smashing Into Scorching Car to Save Baby Goes Viral

A dramatic video has captured the moment a father desperately tried to save his baby from a car that was baking in the Texas heat after the infant accidentally became locked inside.

The terrifying scenes happened in the parking lot of H-E-B grocery store in S. Commerce Street in Harlingen at around 10.30 a.m. local time on Wednesday, when temperatures had already reached 105 degrees, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Authorities said the incident had been entirely accidental and confirmed the baby was unharmed, and no charges will be brought against the parents who had "accidentally locked the keys in their car, with their infant child still in the vehicle," a police spokesperson told Newsweek on Monday.

A "heat dome" is currently smothering more than 35 million Americans as unprecedented temperatures blast huge swathes of the country. More than 950 children have died from heatstroke after being left, or accidentally becoming trapped, in a hot car within the past 25 years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which reported that 33 children died in this way last year. Last August, a 2-year-old girl died after she was allegedly left in the backseat of a hot car in a New Jersey driveway for seven hours. The same month, a 3-year-old boy died after being left alone in an overheating vehicle in Arkansas. And a baby girl died after being left in a car during sweltering heat in New Plymouth, Idaho, last September.

Luckily, this latest case in Texas did not end in tragedy, with local news channel ABC7 tweeting a clip of the incident to Twitter on Saturday, which has now been viewed more than 500,000 times.

The footage begins with a man in a black T-shirt and baseball cap frantically smashing at the windshield with either a crowbar or tire iron, as worried bystanders look on. It was unclear how long the baby had been inside the vehicle by this point.

In the video, another man in a white T-shirt approaches bearing a pole in an apparent attempt to help, before he takes the crowbar or tire iron from the first man and also begins to pound at the glass. He is then able to reach inside and apparently tries to stretch his arm through to unlock the passenger side door.

The footage then cuts to another shot of the baby being passed out through the hole in the windshield by somebody who had managed to get inside the vehicle. It was unclear why the doors were unable to be opened at that point, leading to speculation by some online that the locks had jammed.

The bystander who filmed the footage told reporters that a woman had managed to climb through the shattered glass to pluck the baby to safety by carefully handing the child to a man outside, according to Fox News.

Sergeant Larry Moore of the Harlingen Police Department confirmed to Newsweek that the baby was safe and well, and had been checked over by EMS crews who later arrived at the scene. He added: "I commend the father for his actions. As a parent, I can understand the urgency on removing his child quickly from the vehicle."

No other details about the family were released.

Moore went on to reiterate warnings to parents about the dangers surrounding cars during the warmer months. "I just want to remind everyone to please slow down in their busy everyday lives, and check the backseat of their vehicles before locking the doors and walking away," he said. "A child's body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult's. When a child is left in a vehicle, that child's temperature can rise quickly and the situation can quickly become dangerous."

A warning poster produced by the NHTSA says that the temperature of a car can rise by 20 degrees in just 10 minutes, which can prove fatal incredibly quickly, especially coupled with the fact that children's body temperatures rise more quickly than adults'.