A 5-year-old boy died after he was left in a blazing hot van outside his day care facility in West Memphis, Arkansas, after an employee failed to check the van for several hours, police said Tuesday. 
 
 The boy, identified as Christopher Gardner, was found unresponsive at 3:30 p.m. (4:30 p.m. ET) Monday in the van outside the facility, where he had been delivered at 7:15 a.m. — more than eight hours earlier — West Memphis Police Chief Donald Oaks told reporters. 
 
 The high temperature in West Memphis on Monday reached 88 degrees. Oaks said that by the time investigators arrived, the van's doors had been opened, so they couldn't check interior conditions. But he said the temperature in an adjacent sealed van was recorded at 141 degrees. 
 
 Christopher Gardner Jr., 5, died in a van at a children's health clinic in West Memphis, Arkansas. Family photo / via WMC5 
 
 Even though Christopher was left in the van, he was recorded as having been checked in at the facility, Oaks said. He said an employee responsible for making sure no children were left behind failed to check the van. 
 
 "There were policies in place to prevent this situation from happening," said Oaks, who said that no charges had yet been filed but that an investigation was under way. No employees were identified. 
 
 Related: Hot Car Deaths: Key Facts About Safety in the Summer Months 
 
 A spokesperson for the state Department of Human Services called the incident an "awful situation," telling NBC affiliate WMC of Memphis, Tennessee, that the department would conduct a separate state investigation. 
 
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 The facility, Ascent Children's Health Services of West Memphis, serves children needing occupational physical therapy and special needs services. 
 
 Christopher's family told WMC that the boy had undergone two heart operations in his young life and had been attending Ascent since he was 1 year old for help with "developmental issues." 
 
 "You can see that my great-grandbaby was suffering in that van," Carrie Smith, Christopher's great-grandmother, told WMC. That wasn't right." 
 
 Smith described the boy as a sweet child. 
 
 "When he'd get off the van, he'd say, 'Granny, do you got a cookie for me?'" ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Story highlights Day care staff found 5-year-old boy dead inside van on Monday afternoon 
 
 Staff did not follow policies and procedures, day care CEO says 
 
 (CNN) Four Arkansas day care employees were fired Wednesday after the death of a 5-year-old who was left inside a van all day. 
 
 The staff did not follow company policies and procedures, Ascent Children's Health Services CEO Dan Sullivan said in a statement. Had they followed protocol "this tragedy would not have occurred," he said. 
 
 "There are simply no words to express the overwhelming sadness we feel at the death of this child. We are heartbroken and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family. Ascent will continue to fully cooperate with the authorities and state agencies as they investigate this tragic incident," Sullivan said. 
 
 The West Memphis, Arkansas, location has been closed since the Monday incident. 
 
 The boy's mother told CNN affiliate WMC the van picked him up around 6:30 a.m. He may have been asleep when the van arrived at the day care early Monday and never got off the van, West Memphis Police said. 
 
 Read More ||||| The Arkansas Department of Health is investigating the case of a 5-year-old boy who died after being alone in a hot day care vehicle for hours, authorities said. 
 
 Christopher Gardner was found unresponsive in a sealed van parked outside Ascent child care center in West Memphis, Arkansas, according to police. The facility cares for children with special needs. 
 
 An employee had reportedly picked the child up to transport him to school Monday morning but he was never taken off the bus. The exact cause of death is still under investigation, but the heat index reached nearly 100 degrees Monday afternoon in West Memphis. 
 
 "We're working to see whether the policies were followed," Arkansas Department of Human Services spokeswoman Amy Webb told reporters Tuesday. "Clearly, they weren't in this case. So we need to find out what the breakdown was, how that breakdown happened and then were people properly trained?" 
 
 The agency said the driver and the child care staff member are required to walk to the back of the vehicle to check each seat. Child care centers are also supposed to compare the transportation roster with the class attendance sheet to make sure each child is accounted for, according to DHS. 
 
 Christopher's mother, Ashley Smith, said she is desperate to get to the bottom of the incident. 
 
 "I just need some answers," Smith told ABC Memphis, Tennessee, affiliate WATN-TV Tuesday. "I've never been through this in my life. I wouldn't put nobody through this." 
 
 Ascent issued a statement Tuesday, saying it was "heartbroken" by the child's death. 
 
 "There are simply no words to express the overwhelming sadness we feel at the death of this child," Ascent Children's Health Services said in the statement. "We are heartbroken and our thoughts and prayers go out to the family."
– Police in Arkansas are investigating how day care workers could have left a 5-year-old boy in a sweltering van for hours, NBC News reports. Christopher Gardner Jr. was found unresponsive, strapped into a booster seat at 3:30pm on Monday. That was more than eight hours after the van had arrived at Ascent Children's Health Services, per WMC, and only as it was time to drive the kids home. Administrators at the day care center for special needs children fired four workers Wednesday for failing to follow procedures, reports CNN. "There are simply no words to express the overwhelming sadness we feel at the death of this child," Ascent CEO Dan Sullivan says in a statement. "We are heartbroken." Workers are required to walk to the back of the van and check each seat, and then verify the van's roster with a class attendance sheet to ensure all the kids are accounted for, reports ABC News. West Memphis police tell CNN that temperatures in the parking lot were 91 degrees on Monday when they arrived, and that Christopher may have been asleep when the van arrived at the facility. They say the temperature inside a nearby sealed van was measured at 141 degrees, notes NBC. "I just need some answers," says Christopher's mother, Ashley Smith, per ABC. "I just want justice for my son." Great-grandmother Carrie Smith tells WMC that Christopher "suffered in that van." She says they had a routine when Christopher came home each day. "When he got off the van he'd say, 'Granny, have you got me a cookie today?'" (Two toddlers died last week after being left overnight in a hot car.)