Ashlee Rochelle Stallings (Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office). The Amazon Fulfillment Center where Stallings was working after leaving her daughter in the car (WBTV).
A mother in North Carolina will be spending time behind bars for leaving her 8-year-old daughter to die in a hot car while she spent several hours working her shift at an Amazon Fulfillment Center.
Mecklenburg Superior Judge William T. Stetzer on Thursday ordered Ashlee Rochelle Stallings to serve 105 days in jail for her role in the death of Nhubiy Stallings, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. The judge handed down the sentence after Stallings pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of contributing to the neglect of a minor and one count of misdemeanor child abuse. Stetzer sentenced her to 45 days on the contributing charge and 60 days on the child abuse charge, to be served consecutively. The court credited Stallings with 56 days of time already served. She was facing a maximum possible sentence of 270 days in jail.
In exchange for her pleading guilty, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of felony involuntary manslaughter and downgrade a charge of child abuse by willful act causing serious injury.
As Law&Crime previously reported, officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Freedom Division at about 6:30 p.m. on June 26, 2024, responded to a call regarding an unresponsive child at an Amazon Fulfillment Center in the 4100 block of Wilkinson Boulevard.
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Once there, first responders found an 8-year-old “in critical condition inside of a vehicle,” police said in a news release. Emergency medical personnel with the Charlotte Fire Department transported the girl to Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center “with a life-threatening condition,” a probable cause affidavit said.
Nhubiy was pronounced dead shortly after midnight on June 27, 2024.
“Upon further investigation it was determined that the victim was left in a vehicle in hot weather conditions and suffered a medical emergency,” police said in a statement.
The temperature in Charlotte that day reached as high as 99 degrees, making it one of the hottest days of the year, local CBS affiliate WBTV reported.
According to the affidavit, in an interview with police, Stallings admitted that she “left the victim in the car while she was at work.”
From the affidavit:
The vehicle was running with the air on but she believed the victim turned the car off because she was cold. Ashlee Stallings returned to her vehicle approximately an hour and a half after last speaking with the victim via text to find the victim unresponsive in the back seat floorboard. She used a hammer to bust open the back window and found the victim taking shallow breaths and foaming at the mouth. Ashlee Stallings then drove toward the hospital and stopped at a business on Wilkinson Boulevard to call for help. She admitted she knew the temperature was 94 degrees outside and that she should not have left the victim inside the car alone.
The hospital staff that provided treatment for the victim told authorities her cause of death was a herniated brain as a result of hyperthermia.
