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.
The incident
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.
The court terms
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.
Under the court terms, they are not allowed to work providing school transport service for children and have to relinquish their driver’s license.
They 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
Temperatures in São Paulo soared to 99.8 Fahrenheit last week 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.
