Police in Florida are investigating the death of a child who was discovered by his father in the back seat of the family vehicle when he pulled up to the preschool thinking the boy had been dropped off, the authorities and a school official said.
At just after 5:50 p.m. on Monday, the police and fire department in Plantation, Fla., were called to the World of Discovery Academy, a day care and preschool, to respond to an emergency call about a dead child, the Plantation Police Department said in a statement.
The department said its detectives had started an investigation. It did not provide further information about the name of the child or his father, the cause of the child’s death or whether there were any arrests or charges.
A press officer for the Plantation police could not be reached on Wednesday.
The medical examiner’s office in Broward County, where Plantation is, said in an emailed reply to questions on Wednesday that it could not comment on the case because it was an “active criminal investigation.”
Carolina Quecano, an assistant director at the day care, several miles west of Fort Lauderdale in South Florida, said in an interview on Wednesday that the father of the child, who she said was 23 months old, had arrived on Monday afternoon. He pulled up to the area outside the school where employees meet vehicles driven by parents during pickup or drop-off.
“And the ladies outside said ‘he is not here,’” Ms. Quecano said.
The father, she added, then got out of the family S.U.V. and looked in the back seat.
“He realized the baby was deceased in the car,” she said.
The employees called 911, she said.
While an official cause of death had yet to be released, the discovery of the child generated warnings from the authorities about the dangers of inadvertently or intentionally leaving children in cars, especially as heat wave alerts sweep many areas of the country this week.
About 37 children die every year from heatstroke tied to being left or trapped in hot cars, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Just over 50 percent of hot car deaths happen because someone forgets a child in a car, it said.
In Florida, 122 children have died in hot cars since 1990, with at least three deaths this year, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday.
In South Florida, as temperatures have been in the high 90s and heat indexes have pushed into triple digits, the sheriff’s office advised drivers to never leave children in a parked vehicle.
“Even for a minute,” it said.
Drivers should always make it a habit to “look before you lock” and check before walking away, it said.
Kids and Car Safety, a nonprofit group, is urging automakers and regulators to make technology that could help prevent the recurring tragedies, including interior motion sensors that would sound a horn and send alerts to a phone.
