The family of 3-year-old Ke’Torrius “K.J.” Starkes Jr. is remembering the little boy as a “joyful,” “brilliant” “happy boy who loved life, who would light up any room that he would enter into.”

The toddler died after he was trapped inside a hot car while in the custody of a worker contracted by the Alabama Department of Human Resources, the state’s child protective services agency, according to the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office and the state Department of Human Resources. The Birmingham Police Department is investigating the death.

K.J. had been left inside a car parked outside a home in Birmingham for several hours during the middle of the day on Tuesday, the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

“It’s just hard to comprehend that you would leave a baby in a hot car and just have no recollection whatsoever that the baby, a 3-year-old child, is trapped in your car,” Courtney French, the family’s attorney, told CNN. “He died a brutal death.”

It was humid with temperatures ranging from 93 to 96 degrees during the 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. window when K.J. was allegedly left alone inside the car. Heat index values, which factor in temperature and humidity to determine what it feels like in the shade, ranged from 101 to 105 degrees, according to CNN meteorologists.