A 56-year-old child-care co-owner is under arrest after a 4-month-old girl was left for hours Wednesday inside an overheated facility van outside Ewing’s Love and Hope Daycare Center on Lenox Avenue, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

Darryl Allyn Ewing was arrested Wednesday night on a child-neglect charge and remains behind bar, jail records show.

The suspect’s actions and lack thereof failed to provide the infant with the necessary supervision to protect her, the Sheriff’s Office stated.

Officers were called to the Westside center early Wednesday afternoon and determined that the infant as well as other children had been picked up at their homes in the morning. Ewing was the daycare van driver and had returned to the center with a van full of children about 8:25 a.m., the Sheriff’s Office said. The children were taken into the center, but the infant was left behind still strapped in her car seat in the van’s third row.

Temperatures outside were in the upper-80s to low-90s. The girl’s absence was not noticed until her mother called about 1 p.m. to make after-school arrangements for all her children, the Sheriff’s Office said. Employees learned the infant had never been checked into the center and went to the van to find her unresponsive.

Further investigation showed Ewing was responsible for maintaining a separate driver’s log to document when all children are placed on the van, separate from another signed by parents, police said. The driver’s log showed the girl’s two siblings signed in, but not her, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Taken in for questioning, Ewing refused to talk with detectives and was booked into jail that night, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Ewing has three prior arrests for driving with a suspended license, according to jail records. His wife and co-owner of the daycare, Gloryian Ewing, also was arrested in December 2017 on two counts of child abuse.

The child’s death was being investigated as members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce conducted a hearing on “Summer Driving Dangers: Exploring Ways to Protect Drivers and Their Families,” according to KidsAndCars.org, a national nonprofit dedicated to saving the lives of children and pets in and around vehicles.

The nonprofit states that at least 52 children died last year in hot car-related incidents, a record level. Wednesday’s congressional hearing was to explore technological solutions available to prevent hot car deaths as well as other safety advances.