“The little one, he spent the whole day in the sun”, breathes Réjean Pelletier, still shaken.
Posted at 10:00 p.m.
A blazing sun was beating down on the parking lot of the Jardins Vaudreuil seniors’ residence in Vaudreuil-Dorion.
This is where a 2-year-old toddler was found dead of heat, Friday afternoon, in a car where he had probably been forgotten.
The vehicle had still not been moved on Saturday. In the back seat, little blue sandals and an empty child’s seat.
Janitor of a neighboring building, Réjean Pelletier had left a bouquet of flowers and a stuffed animal in front of the car earlier in the day.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Rejean Pelletier
Still in shock, he struggled to find the words to describe the tragedy. ” It was hot. I had air conditioning, and it was not enough. Imagine the baby,” he manages to stammer.
“Everyone here is sad,” says Cindie Leclerc, a neighbor. “When I arrived from work, there were already police and paramedics. At first, they didn’t want to tell us anything,” she says.
It was only later in the evening that she was informed of the tragedy: a little boy forgotten for “several hours” in the car, which also corresponds to what several witnesses told us.
According to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), the toddler was found unresponsive around 4:15 p.m. in the parking lot of the residence, rue Querbes.
Resuscitation maneuvers were performed on the child, in vain.
For the moment, the SQ has not specified who made the discovery of the boy or how many hours he had been left in the car.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
The toddler was found in the car, dead from heat, late Friday afternoon.
An SQ Major Crimes investigation is underway, as is always the case when the death of a child under the age of 6 occurs in obscure circumstances or in the absence of a known medical cause. A coroner’s inquest will also take place.
” I don’t understand ”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, residents of the neighborhood were all haunted by the same question: how can you forget your child in the car?
” I can not understand. It’s unfortunate, ”says Robert Dumoulin, father of three children.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Cindie Leclerc
I really don’t know what happened. It can be full of stories, ”believes for her part Cindie Leclerc. A change of routine? A tragic oversight? “I don’t think it was intentional, that’s for sure,” she said.
This is not the first death of a child left in a car in Quebec – or in the country.
A child dies every year in Canada after being forgotten inside a vehicle in the middle of summer, according to a study by the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Tools already exist to prevent such a disaster from occurring, such as cameras, mirrors and sensors under the child seat.
However, some are calling for more: making a safety alarm mandatory on the seat of all children under 4 years old.
Coroner Julie A. Blondin made the recommendation after the death of a 6-month-old baby in Quebec in 2018 in similar circumstances.
In her report, she concluded that the child had been “forgotten” and that the death was “accidental”. However, she urged Transport Canada to consider making security alarms mandatory.
“If a child is left in a vehicle, an alarm will go off and make sounds that can be heard outside the vehicle. Some of these devices will even transmit a message or call the driver’s phone,” she wrote in her report.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Small sandals and a child seat were in the back seat of the vehicle, which was still at the scene of the tragedy on Saturday.