Hoboken EMTs Smash Window Of Hot Car To Save ... A Doll?

HOBOKEN, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Medics smashed a sport-utility vehicle's window Thursday in Hoboken in an attempt to save a baby locked inside the sweltering vehicle.

It turns out it was only a doll.

Several witnesses called 911 to report a baby was trapped inside the Honda CRV on Jackson Street, CBS 2's Dave Carlin reported.

Luz Kitty Mieles returned to her car to find shattered glass, apologies and promises that the city will pay for the damage. Her 2-year-old granddaughter left the doll in a child safety seat.

"I said, 'Oh no, my car!'" Mieles told Carlin. "When I got there, everything was broken."

Mieles was at work when EMTs arrived and didn't have a chance to explain.

"It's a doll. It's not a baby. It's a doll," Mieles said, laughing.

She said she has accepted the apology.

The Hoboken Volunteer Ambulance Corps defended the EMTs' actions.

"The guys that were on the ambulance are taking a beating by their coworkers, but it's all in good fun," Thomas Molta, president of the ambulance service, told Carlin. "But again, I'd rather err on the side of caution. You can replace a window. You can't replace a life."

Mieles said the doll is now such a great conversation piece she can't bear to part with it, but one thing's for sure: She will never leave it in the child's car seat again.

"Not my granddaughter's doll, not in the car," she said. "Never ever."

There has been an alarming increase in cases of children left in hot cars. Earlier this month, a 15-month-old Ridgefield, Connecticut, boy died after being left in a car on a hot day. Also in July, a New York City fashion designer was accused of leaving her child trapped inside a car so that she could go shopping, and a Maryland father was arrested on Long Island for allegedly leaving his 2-year-old daughter in a locked vehicle, also while he shopped.

A new law being proposed on Long Island would protect Good Samaritans from being sued for breaking into a vehicle to rescue a child under 8 years old.

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