Grandma left 7-month-old in hot car, killing her, FL cops say. She gets prison
A grandmother convicted of forgetting her 7-month-old granddaughter in the car on a 90-degree day, leading to the baby’s death, has been sentenced to five years in prison, according to Florida authorities.
A jury acquitted 67-year-old Tracey Nix of aggravated manslaughter but convicted her of leaving a child in a motor vehicle for more than 15 minutes causing great bodily harm, Hardee County records show.
Judge Brandon Rafool sentenced her April 3 during a hearing broadcast by Court TV.
“She was distraught,” Rafool said of Nix’s response to finding out her granddaughter was dead. “I don’t believe there’s a lot of remorse in that about her grandchild’s suffering and death. Rather I see her more concerned with her community image in the death of the child.”
Nix, a teacher and principal who worked in the local school system for nearly 40 years, had another grandchild die in her care less than a year earlier, authorities said.
Nix’s 16-month-old grandson, the sibling of the girl who died, wandered out of her home and drowned in a pond when Nix fell asleep while watching him in December 2021, according to attorneys.
She wasn’t prosecuted, records show, and WFLA reported the jury wasn’t allowed to hear about the boy’s death at the trial.
“One of the things that we have struggled with through this whole case has been the exclusion of my other story, which is my son who drowned in her care,” Kaila Nix Schock said, according to WFLA.
Schock asked her mom to watch her 7-month-old baby while she went to a hair appointment on Nov. 1, 2022, Nix’s attorneys wrote in court documents. Nix picked up her granddaughter and brought her inside Beef ‘O’ Brady’s for bible study, Hardee County deputies said in an arrest affidavit.
After bible study, Nix loaded her granddaughter in the car and got home at about 2 p.m., but she never took the baby out of the car, authorities said.
At around 5 p.m., she realized she had left her granddaughter in the car with the windows rolled up, deputies said. Her husband began performing CPR, but the girl died of hyperthermia, according to investigators.
The high temperature that day was 90 degrees, deputies said.
Nix’s attorneys argued for a lighter sentence, saying the girl’s death was an isolated incident, and Nix expressed remorse.
“And I hear today the evidence and the testimony and I get a little more remorse on that, but is it truly remorse?” Rafool said.
“Yes,” Nix answered, with her head bowed.
She addressed the judge in a statement of her own, WFTS reported.
“Whatever your decision is, I want you to know that I’m already in prison,” Nix said at her sentencing. “No one can do more for themselves than I have done to myself. I wake up every day, and I think about it. I am in my own prison, and it will last all of my life.”
Still, Rafool sentenced her to the maximum sentence of five years, unmoved by the remorse argument or her assertions that she was suffering from health conditions and took Ambien and an antidepressant.
Hardee County is in Florida’s Heartland, about an 80-mile drive southeast from Tampa.
This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Grandma left 7-month-old in hot car, killing her, FL cops say. She gets prison."