14 September 2023 , 06:11
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A baby girl has died after being left in a car on a Portuguese university campus for several hours in 26C heat.
The 10-month-old child’s father, described locally as a lecturer and departmental head at the campus near Lisbon, is believed to have forgotten to drop her off at its creche before going to work and leaving her in the vehicle.
He reportedly called 999 after realising his tragic error and discovering the youngster unconscious inside the car. Efforts to revive her proved unsuccessful and she was pronounced dead at the scene.
The unnamed father is said to have parked the family SEAT Ateca car by the campus creche around 8am on Tuesday before going to work at his office in the Nova School of Science and Technology, a faculty of the NOVA University Lisbon located at the Caparica Campus in Almada a half-hour drive south of the Portuguese capital.
The alarm was not raised until 3.30pm when it was already too late to save the youngster’s life. Investigators are understood to be working on the theory the baby girl, who Portuguese press say was called Madalena, was asleep when she was left and her dad simply forgot she was there.
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The outside 26C heat would have meant temperatures inside the locked vehicle may have been double that. The girl’s parents, including her mother who reportedly reached the scene around the time emergency responders arrived, have been offered psychological support.
Autopsy results are yet to be released and are not expected to be made public. The Policia Judiciaria police force in the city of Setubal near Almada is conducting an ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors announced yesterday a formal investigation had been launched.
A three-year-old boy died in the municipality of O Porrino near the city of Pontevedra in Spain’s north-west Galician region in July after his mum “forgot” he was in the back of her car and left him unattended for several hours in eighty degree heat to go to work.
The youngster is said to have been left alone in the vehicle for six hours before anyone realised.
In August 2018 a 10-month-old baby girl died in the Majorcan town of Manacor after her grandfather left her in the back of his car for eight hours in temperatures of up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) after forgetting to leave her at a nursery school.
He found her dead when he returned to the vehicle after running errands several hours later. The unnamed man later accepted a year’s prison sentence in March 2020.