The public prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of a baby found in a car on Tuesday 29 May. The parents, still in shock, have not yet been questioned.

A 16-month-old baby died on Tuesday 29 May after being left in a car parked in direct sunlight in Alsace, according to the Mulhouse public prosecutor’s office and the fire brigade on Wednesday 30 May.

On Tuesday morning, a father was due to drop his son off at nursery before going to work in Sausheim (Haut-Rhin), but he forgot the child in the back seat of the car parked in the company car park.

When the mother went to the crèche at the end of the afternoon to collect their child, she found that he was not there. She immediately contacted her partner, but it was already too late.

The father hospitalised in a state of shock The temperature reached 22°C on Tuesday afternoon, which can cause temperatures of up to 47°C inside a car. When the fire brigade and a doctor from the SMUR (Service mobile d’urgence et de réanimation) arrived, they could only conclude that the baby had died.

The parents, aged 61 for the father and 46 for the mother, were cared for by a psychological unit. The father was hospitalised in a state of shock.

‘The public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation to determine the cause of death. For the moment, the shocked parents have not been interviewed. They will be interviewed at a later date,’ said Mulhouse public prosecutor Edwige Roux-Morizot, adding that an autopsy would be carried out in Strasbourg.

The investigation has been entrusted to the Mulhouse gendarmerie research brigade.