Publications
Partners
A father has been arrested over the death of his 21-month-old daughter, who was left locked in the car for most of the day after he’d forgotten she was there.
The incident took place in the district of Hortaleza in the Spanish capital, Madrid.
The father, a Spanish national, was meant to take her to the nursery but absentmindedly drove to work. When he arrived he simply locked the car and walked to work without realising he’d left his daughter inside.
When the mother went to the nursery around 3pm to pick up her daughter, she was told the girl hadn’t been dropped off that morning.
The mother then frantically located the car and open it with a spare set of keys.
To her horror she found her daughter had been locked inside all day with intense heat.
Paramedics who were called to the scene spent 45 minutes desperately trying to revive the child however the tot had gone into cardiac arrest.
She was declared dead on the scene.
The father who’s receiving psychological attention is said to be "in a state of shock".
He’s been released after being questioned by homicide police, but it’s likely he’ll be charged with "reckless homicide".
There have been several cases in Spain of small children dying after being left in cars during high temperatures.
In August in Manacor, Majorca, a 10-month-old baby died in a heat wave after her grandfather absentmindedly locked her in the car for eight hours.
In an almost identical case in July 2009, a three-year old-boy died in Leioa, in the northern Spanish province of Vizcaya, after his mother forgot to drop him off at the nursery and simply left him locked in the car.
In all cases the common factors seem to have been genuine absent-mindedness combined with characteristically high temperatures.
