An 18-month-old girl has died after being 'forgotten' and left on a nursery minibus for around seven hours in searing temperatures in Portugal. The toddler, named only as Sofia, was found in a critical condition inside the vehicle in Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus River opposite Lisbon just before 4pm yesterday. Paramedics tried to revive her, but she was declared dead at the scene.
Circumstances of the incident
The girl was handed over to a worker at around 8am and was supposed to have been taken to her day care centre, her grandmother said. The alarm was only raised by her mother when she went to pick her up in the afternoon and realised she was not there. The van was reportedly parked on Avenida do Cristo Rei in front of a different facility to the one Sofia attended. The creche the van belonged to has been named locally as Colegio Mestre Cuco.
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.'
Investigation and context
Temperatures in Almada around the time the alarm was raised 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.
This incident follows other similar tragedies. Last month, two children aged two and four were found dead in their family’s car in Carpentras, southeastern France, during a heatwave. In September 2023, a 10-month-old baby girl called Madalena died after being left in a car on a Portuguese university campus for several hours in 26°C heat. Her father, a lecturer, reportedly forgot to drop her off at the creche before going to work. In May last year, a three-year-old boy died in Linares, Spain, after being found trapped inside a parked car in 80°F heat.
