A 10-month-old baby girl died yesterday after she was “forgotten” for seven hours in a parked car on a university campus near Lisbon, Portugal.
The baby’s father, a lecturer and departmental head at a university in Almada, is believed to have forgotten to drop her off at the university’s creche before going straight to his office — leaving her in the parked car at 8.00 am, reported local media.
Investigators are working on the theory that the baby, named Madalena, was asleep while temperatures outside reached 26C and inside the car likely soared to more than 50C.
By 3.30 pm, more than seven hours later the head of the lecturer returned to his car to find his daughter unconscious in the back seat.
The horrified dad called for emergency services but efforts to save her failed 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.
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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