A 2-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl died of suspected heatstroke on Friday after their parents left them asleep in a car in Ogawa, Saitama Prefecture, police said Saturday.
According to police, the parents placed the children in the car at about 9:30 a.m. to drive them to a daycare center, TBS reported. Police quoted the couple as saying they each thought the other was going to drive the children to the center. They then went their separate ways.
When the mother returned from shopping at about 3 p.m., she found the children still in the car unconscious and called the emergency services. Paramedics rushed to the scene and found the infants in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest. They were taken to hospital where they were confirmed dead.
Police say there were no obvious signs of physical injury on the children's bodies and it is believed they may have succumbed to heatstroke. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the temperature was no higher than 14 degrees in the area on Friday.
© Japan Today
42 Comments
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misstiatokyo
My sympathy to the family. Where I live it is a crime to leave children in a car alone if they are under 12yo as the temperatures in the car can quickly reach 50 degrees in a matter of minutes, and young children are not capable of getting out. It should be a crime in Japan so that these tragedies' do not occur.
Frungy
... having children should require a license and an examination. I mean seriously, this is just idiocy. I know the weather seems cool (about 18 degrees in Saitama now), but with closed windows and the focusing effect of glass cars get much hotter than outside.
nath
Frungy @ took the words outta my mouth. I mean seriously..... What were they thinking? Or not......
smithinjapan
"However, not wishing to wake the children..."
Awww... isn't utter stupidity and bad parenting 'sweet'? Sorry, I know these parents must REALLY be hurting, but SERIOUSLY! How stupid are they??
Tessa
The parents' stories keep changing. Now they are saying that they each put one child in the car in the morning, and forgot about them, each assuming that the other parent had dropped the kids off at daycare. I wonder if pachinko or some other form of addiction is involved?
Marilita Fabie-Fujisawa
Immature and low esteem of life. As I was walking my dog the other day, I noticed a one year something toddler inside the car. She was standing up by the window while her mother shopped inside Shimamura. I was shocked to see that she had a ballpen in her hands as well. Instincts told me that I had to tell the authorities about this. So what I did, I went inside the dept store and told a staff about what I saw. I gave her the plate number of the car as well. I doubt she did something about it right away, because while I continued to walk ahead but looking behind me for some changes, nothing seemed to have been done as the van was still there in the parking lot with the baby inside. In fact, this was not the first time I reported such incident. The first time, it was a baby asleep on her baby chair while the mother continued to shop. Now, I can't understand what kind of minds do people have to do such things? They seem to have no care nor fear for whatever outcome there may be..it's like they have the notion that " we can deal with it when something happens"... That's why I say low esteem of family values and of life.
oikawa
Yeah like Tessa reported I think there's a lot more behind this. You might leave a 1 or 2 year old for a in a car asleep for a little while, but not for what according to his story would have been about 4 hours.
sillygirl
oh, don`t want to wake them - now they will never wake.
Disillusioned
They left the kids for four hours without checking on them once? The kids never woke or screamed? Idiots!!!
kimuzukashiiiii
poor kids .... I sincerely hope they just went to sleep and never woke up again, and that they didn't suffer in any way at all. The parents are idiots, at best.
Magnet
Tragic news. Granted, it didn't seem that hot today, but the insides of cars can get quite hot if they're sitting in the sun with the windows up. If the kids were old enough to get themselves out of the car if they needed to, this might not have been a problem. But a 2 year old and a 1 year old? You just never leave kids that age on their own. Some parents... I guess common sense just isn't that common.
Elbuda Mexicano
Some very stupid, stupid parents!! Now these babies are DEAD! Who knows what these people were up to, but sure we are not in summer yet, but leaving the windows CLOSED out in the SUN will make ANY car very, very hot and here we have 2 dead children. How can anybody be so stupid?? These poor kids, RIP
Tamarama
I suspect that they would have to have been in there for at least a couple of hours to get to that stage. It's incredibly negligent.
Mirai Hayashi
No sympathy from me...when will these people ever learn not to leave small children alone...ANYWHERE!!!
cleo
I'm sure the grandparents, aunts and uncles of these babies are pretty cut up about this. Family isn't just the stupid parents.
sangetsu03
Heatstroke? In March? With a high temp of 22 degrees today it doubtful that the temperature in a parked car would be more than 5 degrees warmer than the outside air, or still quite a bit less than normal body temperature. There is something wrong with this story.
cramp
sorry but thats still negligence...even if you're an ignoramus
poppler
This happened YESTERDAY in Saitama. It was not 18 degrees or 22 degrees. It was 14 degrees.
yamero
I hate seeing that kind of news :/
Gloryjean Salvacion
Wow sometimes lazyness comes
timeon
this news needs an update. the parents prepared the children to take them to day care, put them into the car, and somehow both thought that the other one drove the kids to day care. When they realized that neither of them did, it was too late, the kids died of dehydration. A horrible accident, and these parents will have to live with the sin (accidentally) killing their children.
kimuzukashiiiii
why were the kids going to daycare when the parents were not working?
oikawa
Thanks timeon. On mainichi it says the mother put the kids in one car at 9 30, then there was a mix-up about who was going to take them to daycare, and the parents each left in separate cars, so they had 3 cars??! Really? It didn't specify where they left to go to, but it would seem strange to put kids in daycare for the sake of a 4 or 5 hour part-time job.
Fugacis
Idiots. This needs to be prosecuted as criminal negligence and involuntary manslaughter. If the parents are so ignorant of the danger of leaving children in an unventilated car, and so reckless that they would not bother to check, then they have no business caring for children.
In the UK at least, public service announcements go out every summer warning against this, because we've had enough cases ourselves. It doesn't even need to be a particularly hot day; just having bright, direct sunlight shining in through windows is enough to create a greenhouse effect that can be lethal for children or animals. In response to posters above, even 15C is enough if it's a sunny day.
sleepy dog
My wife, child, and I were coming back from a walk recently and saw a kid asleep in a car in our neighbour's driveway. I urged my wife to ask the man across the street or the people from the house. She said it was too uncomfortable. I'm a giant foreigner with broken Japanese, so I was worried about doing it. I'm glad our neighbourhood wasn't on the news. I'll definitely be more vigilant next time.
BurakuminDes
Rest in peace to the poor little Angels . A tragic mix up by the parents - their lives are over now along with their beloved kids. As a Dad it is beyond me how devastated they must feel.
Elbuda Mexicano
I am afraid to say, but many DOGS are treated BETTER than HUMAN babies here in Japan! On a hot day, how many times do I see Japanese use BABY STROLLERS to walk their dogs because the street is too hot?? Well if the street is too hot for bloody dogs, guess what?? It maybe to hot to leave children unattended in cars with the WINDOWS CLOSED!! RIP poor babies in crappy Saitama.
Maitake
just another sad day for the children in japan...
BurakuminDes
@ Elbuda - bit harsh to describe all of Saitama as "crappy ". Sure - it's blue-collar, and there are areas where it is more dangerous and dodgy than our home countries - but I have relatives there and it's mostly reasonably safe .
kimuzukashiiiii
sleepy dog - alternatively, you / your wife could have anonymously called the police or social services?
sleepy dog
kimuzakashii:
I believe I was clear in my contrition. Not enough hail marys?
Open Minded
Regardless of parent's behavior to leave young infants alone in car, I cannot believe heatstroke death with today weather. As other posted, something wrong with this report.
Dennis711
This story is just way too fishy...
Marilita Fabie-Fujisawa
Allow me to comment on Oikawa's opinion in leaving you child for a few minutes in the car...???? You got it all wrong..if that's what you think is being responsible then I suggest for you not to have any kids, it's not for people who think easily on bringing up kids...as a parent, I put my children's life first next to mine above everything..when your child is sick, you stay up all night, when hungry, you prepare their meals no matter how tired you are, you share to them true values and traditions passed on to you by your own parents, and the list just goes on, you're just about everything as a handy man would be all for the good of your children..sometimes you even have to give up your own ambition and business offers and careers...
No Miso
So do you think you did enough to help the victims? Or not your problem?
oikawa
Marilita, you shouldn't be so quick as to judge what other people mean. You need to clarify exactly what is intended when someone says something like "might, ....a little while", especially when you then go on to condemn their parenting. Of course 4 hours is ridiculously too long, and so long as to be suspicious, but for example when your child is asleep and you get to a shop and literally will just be nipping in and out for maybe 10 seconds, so long as you lock the door and can keep the car in sight all the time I would consider that a reasonable risk, even though I can't remember having even done that myself.
jj1980
Now that the temp is rising, get ready to see more of these "Monkey see monkey do" crimes. Because the law and justice system against this is a joke.
Gerard van Schip
Must be a Japanese thing. My wife wanted to leave my son in the car when popping out to the shop for 10 min and was surprised at my look of horror as we never do that in my native Holland nor my adopted England.
We now moved to Japan and I understand the background a bit better. Kids as young as 6 walk alone to school. There is a TV progr where they follow kids with hidden camera while they go alone shopping for the first time around that same age. Things like that are unthinkable in Europe.
Knox Harrington
Incredibly idiotic.
Again, since this happens year after year in Japan, it once again shows that many people here basically are just tall kids without the abiity to think logical thoughts or understand cause/effect. Seriously, how can a thing like this happen? After having been here for a while, I can no longer say I am surprised, though. The Japanese and safety when it comes to cars and kids are all but non-existant, with kids, not only NOT using seatbelts, but jumping around inside a moving car, people watching TV (?!) while driving etc etc...
Aristoman
Parents must be in big shock. There is nothing worse then loosing children. RIP. We all do mistakes. Don't think that you are perfect. Unfortunately this was deadly misteke.
Simona Stanzani
lack of communication in Japan can really lead to criminal (negligence resulting in) tragedy.
TheCookieMobster
In fact the weather explains their deaths rather easily. I believe it was sunny. My car is black. I had some chocolate in my car and that was enough to melt the chocolate as it sat in the parking lot. Now imagine if the car was running. Its a bit cool right? So the heater was most likely on. Now it might have just been rather warm in the car with the engine off, but with it running? Now its an oven. Kids are crying and getting dehydrated with nothing to drink and that heater is also sapping the moisture from the air. Those poor kids!
What really annoys me about this story is that at daycare they spend so much time folding paper and coloring and all those structured activities. They take detailed notes about the kids' day. They do all this cleanliness stuff and you have to provide this and that and they all have to have their hats and bags and other junk. But do they call parents when the kids are not brought to the daycare? No, they just shine it and figure everything must be okay. Japan. Priorities. Nuff said. If they had just called the parents and asked what was up those kids would still be alive.
And for those of you calling for punishment, the first thing to determine is if it was really an accident, cause if it was they have already been punished in one of the worst ways possible. Their kids are dead.