"Probably another 30 minutes it could have been tragic, very tragic," said Eric Budine with the Four Oaks rescue squad.
The Four Oaks rescue squad was called to Garcia's home on Webb Mill Road, after Maria Valdez found her young nephew unconscious inside the family car.
"He was black and red, you know sweating and wet, he was very wet his eyes were closed," Valdez said.
Valdez told Sheriff's deputies the boy was not conscious and that she didn't think the boy was in the car more than 30 to 40 minutes.
But under a blistering afternoon sun the outside temperature was 96 degrees and paramedics say that can turn any car into an oven.
"Within a couple of minutes it can be 120 to 130 easily inside the car without any type of proper ventilation," Budine said.
Relatives say when the family returned from a shopping trip to town; Sonia Garcia thought her 3-year-old son had gotten out of the car with the other children.
"He was in the booster seat and that's how we don't understand what happened. If he was in the booster seat, but he was out of the booster seat, that means he got out of the car somehow, he came back in the car and maybe one of the little girls shut the door or something and he could not open the door," she said.
The boy has been transferred to Wake Med and is in stable condition.
Sheriff's investigators would not say if any charges would be filed.
