A toddler has died after being ‘forgotten’ and left on a nursery minibus for around seven hours amid searing temperatures in Portugal.
The 18-month-old girl was found in a ‘critical condition’ inside the vehicle in Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus River directly opposite the capital Lisbon just before 4pm yesterday.
Paramedics desperately tried to revive her, but she was declared dead at the scene.
The girl, named only as Sofia, was handed over to a worker at around 8am and was supposed to have been taken to her day care centre, her grandmother said.
It appears the alarm was only raised by her mum when she went to pick her up in the afternoon and realised she was not there.
The van was reportedly parked in an avenue called Avenida do Cristo Rei front of a different facility to the one Sofia attended.
Sign up for all of the latest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
Her grandmother told Portuguese tabloid Correio da Manha: ‘We don’t know why my granddaughter was left in a van at this institution, which isn’t hers.
‘The person who had the van killed my granddaughter.’
The creche the van belonged to has been named locally as Colegio Mestre Cuco.
Temperatures around the time the alarm was raised this afternoon in Almada were around 27°C.
There have been no reports of any arrests so far, although Portugal’s Policia Judiciaria police force have been mobilised to take charge of the investigation.
Two children aged two and four were found dead in their family’s car in the town of Carpentras in southeastern France last month as Europe suffered a ferocious heatwave.
In September 2023, a baby girl called Madalena died after being left in a car on a Portuguese university campus for several hours in 26 degree heat.
The 10-month-old child’s father, described at the time 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 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 September 12, 2023, 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.
In May last year a three-year-old boy died in a popular Spanish tourist town after being found trapped inside a parked car in eighty degree heat.
Emergency responders including police and paramedics were sent to the scene after a 999 call from a member of the public.
They tried to revive him for several minutes after freeing him from the vehicle and discovering he didn’t have a heartbeat.
The child was then rushed to a local hospital where he was certified dead.
The drama happened in Linares in the Andalucian province of Jaen, home to the Andres Segovia House Museum dedicated to celebrated classical guitarist Andrés Segovia.
The town is close to Baeza and Ubeda which are both UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.