ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Friday marked six years since the death of Jace Lucas Leslie, a 21-month-old boy who died after being left in a caregiver’s vehicle.
His mother, Makia Wallace, founded the nonprofit Love Like Jace in 2021 to honor her son and raise awareness about the dangers of leaving children unattended in cars. The organization says Jace was left in the caregiver’s vehicle for more than seven hours on Sept. 11, 2020, when temperatures reached 105 degrees.
Love Like Jace now hosts annual safety events and advocates for preventing pediatric vehicular heatstroke. The organization urges adults to check the back seat before leaving their vehicles, keep cars locked and treat child vehicle safety as a shared community responsibility.
Federal officials say caregivers should never leave a child unattended in a vehicle and should build a routine of checking the full vehicle before locking it.
According to Wallace, prosecutors closed the case involving Jace’s caregiver without holding anyone criminally accountable. The caregiver was initially charged, but the charge was later dropped; prosecutors said the case amounted to negligence rather than a crime.
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