A three-year-old boy has died in a popular Spanish town after being found trapped in a car in 27C heat.
Emergency responders dashed to the scene in Linares in the Andalucian province of Jaen, after a member of the public made a frantic 999 call just before 3pm on Tuesday.
The car was parked on a street in a residential area of Linares, where temperatures soared to around 27C today.
Rescue workers freed him from the vehicle where he was found without a heartbeat and attempted to revive him for several minutes.
The child was then rushed to a local hospital where he was tragically declared dead.
Police have now launched an investigation into the death in an attempt to clarify what happened.
It was not immediately clear this afternoon if the person who called the emergency services was a passer-by who happened to spot the child in the car or if they were related to the youngster.
It is also not known how long the three-year-old had been left in the vehicle before he was found.
If police discover the youngster had accidentally been left in the car by a forgetful relative or friend, it will not have been the first tragedy of its kind.
In April a three-year-old child died after his 39-year-old aunt ‘forgot’ to drop him off at nursery and left him sleeping on the back seat of her car in searing heat.
She went to work and only realised six hours later what she had done when she returned to the vehicle on a lunch break – alerting police and firefighters who rushed the youngster ‘in a bad way’ to hospital where he suffered fatal cardiac arrest.
Detectives said at the time they had launched a manslaughter probe.
And on November 14, 2023, Apollo Gabriel Rodrigues, two, died after allegedly being forgotten about by his school minibus driver and the man’s wife who worked as a monitor in an area called Villa Maria north of Sao Paulo’s city centre.
Flavio Robson Benes, 45, discovered the child unconscious on a back seat of the vehicle and rushed him to hospital but he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
He and his partner, named at the time as 44-year-old Luciana Coelho Graft, were questioned by police as part of a homicide investigation ahead of the youngster’s funeral.
The minibus was part of a free school transport scheme operated by the city council.
Apollo’s mum Kaliane Rodrigues recalled at the time how her son had been crying when she handed him over so he could be taken to his nursery because he ‘didn’t want to go.’
She told local media: ‘Apollo usually went in the front but the driver’s assistant put him on the back seat and forgot about him.
‘Regardless of where she placed him in the van, she’s been negligent and irresponsible because anyone who works with children has to always be attentive.
‘I want justice. All I want is for justice to be done.’
In September 2023 a baby girl called Madalena died after being left in a car on a Portuguese university campus for several hours in 26C heat.
The 10-month-old child’s father, described at the time locally as a lecturer and departmental head at the campus near Lisbon, is believed to have forgotten to drop her off at its creche before going to work and leaving her in the vehicle.
He reportedly called 999 after realising his tragic error and discovering the youngster unconscious inside the car.
Efforts to revive her proved unsuccessful 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 September 12 before going to work at his office in the Nova School of Science and Technology,
In August 2018 a 10-month-old baby girl died in the Majorcan town of Manacor after her grandfather left her in the back of his car for eight hours in temperatures of up to 30C after forgetting to leave her at a nursery school.
He found her dead when he returned to the vehicle after running errands several hours later. The unnamed man accepted a year’s prison sentence in March 2020.