Quebec baby severely burned
Father left child seat, with his 5-month-old daughter in it, on top of a stove
MONTREAL— A Victoriaville couple survived a real nightmare after the child seat for their 5-month-old baby caught fire Thursday evening.
The seat, with the child in it, was placed on a stove top by her father, Quebec media reported.
Young Fanny was out of danger Friday.
The terrible drama was an accident, the child’s mother, Caroline Morin, told local media.
It was reported that Frédéric Beaudet, the father, accidentally turned on the stove while placing the seat with the baby on it. The couple had just taken the girl to get her ears pierced.
The unusual move was not surprising: Beaudet had a habit of placing the seat on the stove, Morin said.
“I told him 50 times never to put it on the stove. He did it anyway,” Morin, shaken by the tragedy, told local station LCN Friday. She could not be reached Friday, as she was at SteJustine hospital in Montreal with Fanny and Beaudet, who had burns on both hands after taking the baby out of the flames.
The couple didn’t immediately re- alize the seat had caught fire, it was reported, because they were busy preparing the child’s bottle. But they rushed into the kitchen from the living room where they were smoking when they heard screams.
“It’s my boyfriend who took her out as the seat was burning. He suffered burns to the hands and injury to the lungs,” Morin told La Nouvelle Union, a local newspaper. The burns came from burning plastic, she said.
Aneighbour then helped the child’s father fight the fire while the mother called 911, the baby in her arms, it was reported.
“I took her against me. I sang songs to her, I told her to stay with us,” she told La Nouvelle Union.
Just after the tragedy, the father “kept saying, ‘This is my fault, it’s my fault.’ He blamed himself for what happened,” a neighbour said.
Investigators from the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police, met the parents Friday.
No charge of criminal negligence had been made against the couple Friday, but authorities did not exclude it as a possibility.
“Is it that this is an accident? Is it that there are criminal elements in this event? It is too early to conclude. The investigation is not over, “said Sgt. Claude Denis, a spokesman for the Sûreté.
Investigators had not met all the witnesses Friday.