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 in an overheated school bus and died in a hospital in Brazil on Tuesday
- The two-year-old was picked up from his home around 7am and was only dropped off at his daycare before the driver and supervisor found him at 4.20pm.
- The driver and his caregiver, who is also his wife, were arrested and granted provisional release on Wednesday after appearing in court
A two-year-old boy died after being left in an overheated school van on Tuesday by a driver and supervisor who forgot to drop him off at a daycare center in Brazil.
Apollo Rodrigues was picked up from his home in the southeastern city of São Paulo around 7 a.m. and was found unconscious around 3:30 p.m. when the driver went to pick up the vehicle from 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 Municipal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy is pending.
Robson and Coelho were arrested on charges of intentional murder. They appeared in court on Wednesday and were granted provisional release pending the outcome of their legal proceedings.
Two-year-old Apollo Rodrigues died on Tuesday in São Paulo, Brazil, after a school van driver and his assistant, who is also his wife, forgot to escort him from the vehicle to his daycare. Civilian police believe the intense heat inside the van may have contributed to the boy’s death on a day when 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 remove the child from the vehicle while taking him to his school. childcare. Police said the high temperatures in the city, combined with the heat inside the vehicle, could have contributed to his death
According to the court conditions, they are not allowed to work in school transport for children and must surrender their driver’s license. They must appear in court every month and are not allowed to leave their homes between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
In addition, they are not allowed to talk to witnesses and the victim’s family, and are not allowed to travel outside São Paulo for more than eight days without informing the court.
Civilian police investigators believe the heat in the car contributed to the boy’s death.
Temperatures in São Paulo rose to 99.8 Fahrenheit on Tuesday, making it the warmest day on record since the National Institute of Meteorology began keeping records. The heat wave continued Wednesday, rising to 104 Fahrenheit.
Rodrigues’ mother, Kaliane Rodrigues, told Brazilian television channel TV Globo that he cried as she walked to the bus because he did not want to go to daycare, where he had been attending for four months.
“He was crying, he didn’t want to go,” she said.
The distraught mother said that Coelho always made sure her son sat in the front of the bus.
“Today she put him in the backseat and forgot about my son,” she said.
Kaliane Rodrigues with her two-year-old son Apollo Rodrigues, who died on Tuesday after being left in an overheated van
Kaliane Rodrigues sensed something was wrong when she returned from work and her son had not yet arrived from daycare.
“Every time I arrived, my son was there. Today I arrived and my son was not there,” she said. ‘And I’ll never see him again. I will never see my son again.
“I never thought about going through this, it’s very hard knowing I left my son in the station wagon thinking he was safe and going to work,” she added. “But you know, a mother’s feeling. My day wasn’t going well and when it was four o’clock I said, “Mom, has Apollo arrived?”
Online news channel G1 and TV Globo had access to a police report, which showed that Coelho always checked the bus to make sure all the children had gotten off.
Coelho told authorities that she suffered from migraines and that this may have affected her attention span.
Apollo Rodrigues was found lying on the penultimate bench on the bus.