Newaz Hassan issues warning to parents after son Arikh dies in hot car in Glenfield, Sydney
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A father who left his son in a car for more than six hours on one of Sydney’s hottest days this summer has spoken about his son’s death for the first time.
Three-year-old Arikh Hasan died last Thursday when his father Newaz left him in the car after forgetting to drop him off at daycare.
Moments earlier she had taken her other son, six, to primary school and spent the rest of the day working from her home in Glenfield, west of Sydney.
Mr. Hasan only realized his horrible mistake when he returned to the Toyota Corolla to pick up his eldest son from school.
Footage from the heartbreaking scene shows the distraught father sitting on the ground with his hands on his head crying uncontrollably.
Newaz Hasan (right) has spoken for the first time after his 3-year-old son Hasan died last week after he was left in the family car in 35 degree heat for more than six hours after Newaz forgot to drop him off at daycare.
Mr Hasan was seen collapsing at the scene when the boy was pronounced dead in Glenfield, western Sydney last Thursday.
“Usually I would talk to my son on the way to kindergarten, you know, we would chat… but because I was asleep that day, the car was quiet,” Hasan said. the daily telegraph.
I think that silence made me forget that he was there.
Fully engaged in his job as a senior bank analyst in his home office, the day passed as normal.
But outside, young Arikh was slowly succumbing to the searing heat.
Trapped by the car seat restraint system, the toddler would also not have been able to open the car doors with the child locks installed in the vehicle.
At around 3 pm, Mr. Hasan unknowingly got back behind the wheel with Arikh still inside and drove to Glenfield Public School to pick up his oldest son.
It wasn’t until she got back to the car after picking up the boy that she saw Arikh still tied to the back seat of the car.
NSW Police have not charged Mr Hasan but investigations into the tragedy are ongoing (pictured: Mr Hasan’s car at the scene)
Tributes were left at the site as the community mourns the loss of the child.
“Even talking about it now, I still don’t know how it happened… There was nothing on my mind, I wasn’t distracted, nothing… I just forgot,” Hasan said.
“I just want to tell other parents to always be 120 percent sure where your kids are.”
The father, with the help of bystanders, removed the three-year-old from the car and rushed him to a nearby bottle shop, where paramedics desperately tried to revive him.
Following the harrowing discovery, Mr. Hasan struck the window of his car, injuring his hand.
Traumatized by the ordeal, he, his wife Marzia and their eldest son have not returned home since the tragedy and are staying with relatives in south-west Sydney.
Experts say Hasan may have suffered from “forgotten baby syndrome”, when a parent or carer experiences short-term memory loss caused by distraction or a change in routine.
Mujammel Hossain (pictured in the pink shirt) told Daily Mail Australia that he saw Mr Hasan scream and said that immediately after Arikh was removed from the car, he realized that he had already died because he was extremely hot and “no pulse”.
This is because the caregiver is on autopilot and a change as simple as no noise can be enough to induce the mental state.
Eyewitness Mujammel Hossain told Daily Mail Australia that he met the distraught father after picking up his daughter from school.
He repeatedly told her: ‘I forgot, I forgot’ to leave his youngest son asleep in the nursery.
Mr Hossain knew immediately from Arikh’s condition that he had already died as he was extremely hot and “pulseless”.
When paramedics arrived to take the boy to the hospital, Hossain said the boy’s devastated father told him “he’s not going to be okay.”
Bottle shop clerk Sandeep Shresdha was working at the time the boy was brought into his shop and recalled there were “a lot of people crying”.
“It was very hot and this concrete out front was on fire and people were sitting here and sobbing,” Shresdha said.
“I couldn’t do anything, it was so overwhelming.”
NSW Police have not charged Mr Hasan, but investigations into the tragedy are ongoing.
Bottle shop clerk Sandeep Shresdha was working at the time the boy was brought into his shop and recalled there were “a lot of people crying”.
More than 5,000 children are rescued from hot cars in Australia each year, the majority being babies and toddlers, according to child safety advocates Kidsafe.
“Leaving children unattended in a car, even for a short period of time, can be fatal,” states the Kidsafe website.
“Children are at particular risk because they can lose fluids rapidly, become dehydrated and suffer from heat stroke.”
In December 2015, celebrity chef Matt Moran summoned the media to a cooking demo at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, where he prepared a piece of lamb using only the interior heat of a parked car.
“This has been in there for a little over an hour and a half,” Moran said, slicing through the meat in a demo video, “that’s overkill to me.”