5-year-old Malaysian girl dies after left in parked car for four hours by mother

Malaysian news site The Star reported that the tragedy unfolded on Jan. 30, when the child’s mother, a staff member at Hospital Shah Alam in Selangor, forgot her daughter in the back seat after picking her up from a daycare center around 2 p.m.

The oversight occurred as the child was asleep, and the mother, upon arriving at the hospital, exited the vehicle with the engine turned off, not realizing her daughter was still inside. The mistake was discovered only after the mother received a call from her husband around 6 p.m.

The young girl was found unconscious inside the car and rushed to the hospital’s emergency department. However, she was eventually declared dead, despite the medical team’s best efforts.

The Straits Times reported that a post-mortem examination was conducted the following day, with the exact cause of death awaiting further laboratory results. Authorities stated that the preliminary investigation revealed no signs of external or internal injuries on the child, and the case is being examined under the Child Act.

This incident marks the latest in a series of similar tragedies across Malaysia. In November last year, a two-year-old girl died after being left in a car for over seven hours in Selangor. The mother, distracted by work, forgot her child in the vehicle after planning to drop her off at a daycare center.

Before this, two devastating incidents occurred in October last year. A 16-month-old girl perished in Terengganu after her father left her in his car at a public university, and an eight-month-old girl died in Kuala Lumpur after her doctor mother forgot to drop her at the nursery before heading to work.