Father charged with manslaughter after his twin 16-month-old daughters die in baking hot car where 'he had abandoned them for hours'

The father of 16-month-old twin girls has been arrested and charged with manslaughter after they were found dead inside his car where they had been abandoned for hours.

Asa North, 24, left his little girls  Ariel and Alaynah strapped into the back seats of an SUV outside a duplex in Carrollton, Georgia in temperatures exceeding 90f.

The twins, who had just turned 16 months old on Thursday, were discovered unresponsive in the vehicle by North, who desperately tried to revive them, said Carrollton police.

'We do believe they were left in the car for a period of time, ' said Captain Chris Dobbs of the Carrollton Police Department. 

Regina Cleveland, a family friend, told local news station WSB-TV : 'Only he knows the answer about what happened today, but I hope and pray it was an accident.'

Neighbors said North was frantic after discovering the girls.

'The neighbors heard some screaming — I guess coming from the father — and saw him running around back with the two children,' Carrollton police Capt. Chris Dobbs told CBS 46.  

When police arrived around 6.30pm Thursday at the property on Tillman Drive, North, along with neighbors, was desperately trying to revive the twins in a kiddie pool.

Neighbors also arrived with ice packs to try to get the water temperature down, Fox 5 reported.

Temperatures in Carrollton breached 90 degrees in the afternoon, but cooled down later due to a thunder storm. 

Paramedics took Ariel and Alaynah to the Tanner Medical Centre less than five minutes away where they were pronounced dead. 

On Friday morning, North was charged with two counts of reckless conduct and two counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Authorities reported that they do not believe the deaths were intentional.

While authorities are still investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths, Dobbs said they believe North left the children unattended in the SUV for a certain amount of time.

North was transported to the Carroll County Jail after his arrest.  It is not immediately clear if he has an attorney.

'It's just a tragic situation, a sad situation for the whole family and for the community,' Dobbs told CBS46. 

Police said the twin's mother was in Atlanta visiting her sister, who had been injured in a car accident.

She arrived at the Tanner Medical Centre on Thursday evening, according to police.

The deaths of the twin girls come as prosecutors in another metro Atlanta county prepare for the murder trial of 35-year-old Justin Ross Harris. 

Harris accused of intentionally leaving his toddler son to die in a hot SUV for about seven hours on June 18, 2014.

Harris' trial was moved to the coastal Georgia city of Brunswick after a judge agreed with defense lawyers that an impartial jury could not be found in the Atlanta area. 

The trial is expected to begin in September.

Nationwide, the girls who died in Carrollton are the 25th and 26th children to die this year in hot vehicles, more than double the number who had died by this point in the summer during 2015, said Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsAndCars.org, a group that tracks such deaths each year. 

By this time last year, 12 children had died in hot cars, Fennell said in an email on Thursday night.(dailymail)