As temperatures continue to climb, parked cars can reach boiling point. Sunlight passes through the glass, is absorbed by the interior seats and then re-emitted as heat that’s trapped inside – so anything left inside the vehicle will burn up too.
This was sadly the fate for a three year old boy after he was left unattended in a car for over ten hours until his dehydrated body was found by his horrified stepmother.
The horrifying incident took place on a typically scorching hot day in Ideira, Brazil.
On the morning of Friday April 25, Miguel Antunes Versari was getting ready to go to nursery. The toddler had been suffering from flu-like symptoms and was medicated with ibuprofen so was not energetic and noisy as usual.
His mother’s partner was meant to drop off the blond haired and blue eyed toddler at 7am, after first dropping off her wife for the start of her nursing shift at the local hospital.
Tired Miguel fell asleep on the journey to the hospital and by the time his mum was dropped at work, she had totally forgotten that Miguel was in the car.
The little boy slept in the back seat car when she drove back to the family home.
In an action that his stepmother will regret forever, she left Miguel in the vehicle – a red Chrysler and went indoors.
The outside temperature in Videira was about 31C during the heat of the day. Inside a hot car in those conditions, the mercury could hit more than 57C – similar to a warming oven.
At the end of the day ten hour later at 5pm Miguel’s stepmother prepared to collect her stepson from nursery. As she returned to her car – she found his lifeless tiny body.
Police opened a suspicious death investigation and were quizzing Miguel’s stepmother.
The local force is waiting for an autopsy report to reveal exactly how the boy died, and were analysing CCTV footage from around the family home.
A police spokesperson said the day after the terrible discovery: “Yesterday, she said that the child had flu-like symptoms and was medicated with ibuprofen.
“So he was not as active as usual and was sleeping in the back seat of the vehicle.
“After leaving her partner at work, she did not realise that the child was sleeping.”
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