Australian police have charged a 44-year-old woman with ‘leaving a child in a motor vehicle and causing emotional distress’ after four children aged nine, eight, seven and six were allegedly left inside a car on Sydney’s hottest day since 1991.
Police were called to a parking lot on Sydney’s Canterbury Road after witnesses rescued four distressed children from a hot car just after 3pm on Wednesday the Daily Mail reports.
When police arrived to the scene, the woman in question had already left with the four children but later presented herself at a local police station.
Heatwave conditions in the Australian city saw temperatures rise to the 40s and the day of the alleged incident was one of the hottest days on record since the early 1990s.
The children, who ranged in age between six and nine, were described by police as ‘distressed but not injured’. After turning herself in, the woman was charged and is expected to appear in court on the 22nd of February.
The Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia regularly warn parents about the potentially fatal risk of leaving children unattended in a car, even for a short period of time. The child safety organisation say that children are particularly at risk because they can lose fluid quickly, become dehydrated and suffer from heatstroke.
Figures released by the group show that every year in Australia, over 5,000 children are rescued after being left unattended in a car. Recent figures from the Victoria ambulance service revealed that, in a twelve month period, paramedics rescued 1,433 children (under 13 years of age) who had been left unattended in a car.
November – March was the ambulance service’s busiest period with an average of five call outs a day to a child left unattended in a car, with 45 percent of incidents occurred between 11am and 3pm.
