A Nelson Mandela Bay mother faces a charge of culpable homicide after her six-month-old child died while allegedly being locked in a hot car for several hours.
Police spokesperson Col Priscilla Naidu said the 34-year-old woman from Despatch loaded the baby girl into her car at 6.45am last Thursday to drop off her three-year-old at school.
She forgot to remove the infant from the car when she returned home.
About seven hours later, she went to a hairdresser where she spent about two hours.
She picked up her son from daycare and only then realised the baby was still in the car.
The temperature that day reached a high of 26C.
“It is alleged that a Despatch mother of two minor children, a boy aged three and a six-month-old girl, put them into the back of her vehicle and drove to the older child’s daycare centre and dropped him off before returning home with the infant,” Naidu said.
“At about 1pm, the woman left for a hairdresser and at about 3pm went to fetch the boy from his daycare centre.
“It is further alleged that while she was putting the boy into his car seat at the back, she realised the infant was never taken out of the vehicle.
“The child was rushed to hospital but was declared dead.”
The police are investigating a case of culpable homicide.
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