Three-year-old dies after being left in hot school van

BANGKOK: A three-year-old kindergartener died after she was left behind in a hot school van in Thailand, police said.

The girl was discovered on Wednesday afternoon after her mother went to pick her up at the end of school in the southern province of Pattani and was told that the child was absent.

The mother and a teacher located the driver, who led them to the locked van where they found the body.

“The girl’s body was pale, no wounds, with a little blood stain at her nose,” Montri Kongwatmai, commander of the Sai Buri district police, said yesterday. “She must have thrashed around.”

The heat inside the stuffy van and a lack of air caused her death, he said, citing the autopsy results.

The 23-year-old driver admitted to failing to check whether all the children had gotten out of the vehicle in the morning, Montri said.

He was charged with negligence resulting in death.

From 2012 to 2016 in Thailand, there were 13 cases of children abandoned in schoolbuses or private cars, statistics show, part of a worldwide phenomenon referred to as “Forgotten Baby Syndrome”. Six of the cases were fatal.

“The problem with child deaths in school vans ... is that (it) keeps repeating itself due to the negligence of the service provider,” Adisak Plitponkarnpim, director of the Thailand’s National Institute of Child and Family Development, said. — AFP