Police have launched an investigation after an 18-month-old girl was allegedly left inside a nursery transport vehicle for several hours before she was discovered and pronounced dead at the scene
An 18-month-old girl died after she was allegedly left inside a nursery transport vehicle for several hours.
The toddler, known only as Sofia, was reportedly collected at about 8am and is said to have remained inside the vehicle after being picked up for nursery in Portugal. Nursery staff were unaware the child was missing, until her mother arrived to collect her later that afternoon and was told she had never attended nursery.
Sofia’s grandmother said the toddler was normally dropped off at the same time each day and that her arrival should have been recorded. She said: “She’s dropped off every year, every day, at the same time. And whenever she isn’t dropped off, there’s a record of it. And there’s a record of the time she arrived, and it wasn’t possible to provide a record.”
The child attended a nursery in the Pragal area, but the vehicle had reportedly been parked outside another site run by the same institution on Avenida do Cristo Rei.
Her grandmother said Sofia’s mother arrived to collect her only to find that staff did not know where she was. She said: “My daughter had come to pick up her daughter and nobody knew where she was. It was only then that they told us. They said no.
“They came running over here to find out what was happening and had to break down the door to get in and rescue my granddaughter. I don’t know how many children are in the care of this institution.”
Firefighters, an INEM emergency medical team and PSP officers were dispatched to the scene. By the time emergency crews arrived, a window of the vehicle had reportedly already been smashed in an attempt to reach the little girl. Paramedics immediately began advanced life support and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but Sofia was pronounced dead at the scene despite prolonged attempts to save her.
Police said the case was being treated as a suspecious incident in which a child was inadvertently left inside a school transport vehicle. Portugal’s Judicial Police launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Sofia’s death. Local reports said the vehicle was the personal car of an employee at the institution, although a school transport sticker was displayed on its windscreen.
The president of the Commission for the Protection of Crime Victims said the circumstances appeared to point towards alleged negligence rather than an intentional act.
He said: “It doesn’t seem to me that this is a case of someone setting out to take her life. In other words, this is a type of case, as happens in accidents caused by swerving, where there is no intent, but the fact remains that a death has occurred. And so, if a death occurs, and if someone kills someone…
“Here, the girl was not killed by someone’s direct action; the baby was not killed by a direct act, but because of an oversight. And so, leaving her in a van for seven hours; that’s negligent.”
He said the van was parked at a different nursery to the one Sofia attended. He added: “What is certain is that they didn’t check whether all those children were inside the school, and apparently she wasn’t; she was in a minibus that was actually parked outside – not at the nursery for children of her age, but at another one.”
He said: “I’d say that everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong – there was no proper procedure in place. Now, there is clearly a case of negligence here, and that’s where the difference lies, in my view, and that’s where the investigation will focus.”
He added: “I think everyone has already been severely punished. This includes the headteacher, the staff, and above all the child’s parents and family, who, alongside the child herself, are the main victims in this case due to her death.”
