Brazilian boy, 2, dies after being left in hot school van as driver and assistant forget to drop him off at daycare, leaving him inside sweltering vehicle for nearly nine hours on 99.8 degree day
- Apollo Rodrigues was left inside an overheated school van and died at a hospital in Brazil on Tuesday
- The two-year-old was picked up at his home around 7am and was not dropped off at his daycare before the driver and attendant found him at 4:20pm
- The driver and his attendant, who is also his wife, were arrested and on Wednesday were granted their provisional release after appearing in court
A two-year-old boy died after he was left in an overheated school van by a driver and attendant who forgot to drop him off at a daycare center in Brazil on Tuesday.
Apollo Rodrigues was picked up at his home in the southeastern city of São Paulo around 7am and was discovered unconscious around 3:30pm when the driver went to pick up the vehicle at a garage and noticed it was locked.
The driver, Flávio Robson, 45, and his assistant, Luciana Coelho, 44, who is also his wife, rushed Rodrigues to Vereador José Storopolli Muncipal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy is pending.
Robson and Coelho were arrested on intentional homicide charges. They appeared before a judge on Wednesday and were granted their provisional release as they await their legal process to play out.
Two-year-old Apollo Rodrigues died in São Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday after a school van driver and his assistant, who is also his wife, forgot to escort him out of the vehicle and to his daycare center. The Civil Police believes the intense heat inside the van may have contributed to the boy’s death on a day temperatures reached 99.8 Fahrenheit
A two-year-old boy was pronounced dead at a hospital in the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo on Tuesday after the driver of a school van (pictured) and his assistant forgot to take the child out of the vehicle while taking him to his daycare. Police said that the high temperatures in the city combined with the heat in the vehicle could have contributed to his death
Under the court terms, they are not allowed to work providing school transport service for children and have to relinquish their driver’s license. The are required to appear in court every month and are prohibited from leaving their homes between 10pm and 6am.
In addition, they are barred from talking to witnesses and the victim’s family, and are prohibited from traveling outside São Paulo for more than eight days without telling the court.
Civil Police investigators believe that the heat inside the car contributed to the boy’s death.
Temperatures in São Paulo soared to 99.8 Fahrenheit on Tuesday, making it the hottest day in history since the National Institute of Meteorology started keeping data. The heat wave continued Wednesday, rising to 104 Fahrenheit.
Rodrigues’ mother, Kaliane Rodrigues, told Brazilian television station TV Globo that he was crying when she walked up to the bus because he did not want to go to the daycare, which he had been attending for four months.
‘He cried, he didn’t want to go,’ she said.
The distraught mother said that Coelho would always make sure that her son sat in the front of the bus.
‘Today she put him in the back seat and forgot my son,’ she said.
Kaliane Rodrigues with her two-year-old son Apollo Rodrigues, who died Tuesday after he was left inside an overheated van
Kaliane Rodrigues felt something was off when she returned from work and her son had not arrived from the daycare.
‘Whenever I arrived, my son was there. Today I arrived and my son was not there,’ she said. ‘And I will never see him again. I will never see my son again.
‘I never thought about going through this, it’s very difficult knowing that I left my son in the station wagon thinking he was safe and went to work,’ she added. ‘But, you know, a mother’s feeling. My day wasn’t good and when it was 4pm I said, ‘ Mom, has Apollo arrived?’
Online news outlet G1 and TV Globo had access to a police report, which indicated that Coelho always checked the bus to make sure that all of the children had gotten off.
Coelho told authorities that she had been suffering from a migraine headache and that it may have impaired her attention span.
Apollo Rodrigues was found lying down on the second to last bench in the bus.
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