5-year-old girl dies after being left alone in car parked near Hospital Shah Alam for 4 hours
She was found unconscious and pronounced dead after unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate her.
KUALA LUMPUR – A five-year-old girl died after being accidentally left behind in a car parked near the back entrance of Hospital Shah Alam on 30 January.
The New Straits Times reported that her mother, who works at the hospital, had picked up her daughter from a nearby daycare centre at 2pm in the car before returning to work. The girl was asleep and was left in the car with the engine turned off.
The 34-year-old mother only realised that her daughter was in the car after her husband contacted her at 6pm.
The Shah Alam district police chief, Assistant Commissioner Mohd Iqbal Ibrahim said in a statement that the girl was then found unconscious in the car and rushed to the hospital’s emergency department.
“Efforts to resuscitate her failed. She was confirmed dead by the medical officers there,” he said.
No external or internal injuries on the girl, and a post-mortem was conducted on 31 January, with results pending laboratory investigations.
Case being investigated
The case is being investigated under the Child Act, according to the New Straits Times. If found guilty, a person could be jailed up to 10 years, fined up to fined up to RM20,000 or both.
“The public is advised to be more careful when picking up their children from school or daycare centres, especially the younger ones, to prevent such incidents from recurring,” said Iqbal.
In October last year, a 16 month-old toddler died after her father left her inside a hot car for nearly the entire day at a public university in Terengganu.
That same month, another eight-month-old girl in Kuala Lumpur died after being left in a car for 10 hours.
A mother was also charged with child abandonment in December 2023 for leaving her two-year-old daughter inside a car in Ara Damansara that resulted in her death.
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