A baby has died in Greece after reportedly being left in a car by the father for hours unattended.
The tragedy occurred in the city of Arta in north-western Greece. The baby was rushed to the local hospital after the parents had established what happened, but the child did not survive.
The authorities have ordered a post-mortem to determine the baby’s exact cause of death.
Baby dies in Greece after being forgotten in car
According to early reports in the Greek media, the baby was a five-and-a-half-month-old girl. Her parents left home in the morning for work. The father left with his daughter with him and was supposed to drop her off at nursery for the day.
However, according to what the police told the Greek state-run news agency AMNA, the father forgot his child in the back seat of the car and left her there for a number of hours.
When the mother went to pick up the baby from nursery and discovered that she was not there, she immediately phoned her husband who quickly returned to the car to search for their daughter.
He reportedly found his daughter unconscious in the car and foaming at the mouth. She was rushed to the hospital but died.
The police were informed about the incident by the hospital. An autopsy of the body will take place in the city of Ioannina.
Other incidences of infant deaths
This is not the first incident in which a baby has died in Greece under tragic circumstances.
In January this year, a mother was arrested in northern Greece after her baby daughter, just eleven months old, was found dead in an irrigation dam. Police rescuers found the baby’s body in the Aliakmonas Dam about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Athens.
Another incident in 2019 occurred when a dead infant was discovered in a garbage bin in the town of Aigio, in the Peloponnese.
Later that year in December, another baby was discovered abandoned in a garbage bin in the city of Kalamata. This time however, the infant survived. It was rescued by a woman who heard its cries coming from the bin.
A 24-year-old woman believed to have been responsible for the abandonment of the baby was subsequently arrested.
“The baby was fortunate in its misfortune… there was a delay in the day’s collection,” commented Kalamata’s Mayor, Thanassis Vassilopoulos, in the aftermath of the incident.
“The garbage trucks do not just load waste, they compress it,” he later added during an interview with Alpha TV.
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
