An infant died after being found inside a car in Springfield, Virginia, on Friday afternoon, according to police.
Fairfax County police said it happened on the 6400 block of Merriweather Lane at the driveway of a licensed day care center.
The preliminary investigation shows that the 11-month-old baby’s father was at home, preparing to drop off an older child at the day care.
The infant attended the same day care, but had a different start time.
After placing the infant inside an SUV, the father elected to use another vehicle — placing the older child in the second vehicle for drop-off — and to do other tasks.
The father returned home later in the second vehicle and switched back to the SUV, which the infant had been neglected in all day, to go back to the day care center to pick up what he believed were both children.
After day care employees told him that the infant was never dropped off at the facility, the father returned to the SUV to discover the infant unconscious and unresponsive in the back seat.
Police were called just before 5 p.m. and arrived at the day care center to find the father “very distraught.”
Their preliminary investigation shows that the father inadvertently left the infant in the SUV for an extended amount of time.
The infant was taken to a hospital where multiple revival attempts were performed before the child was pronounced dead.
The county experienced sunny conditions throughout the day, with temperatures that reached 90 degrees.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will conduct the autopsy to determine the exact cause of death.
Detectives from the Fairfax County Police Department’s Major Crimes Bureau and Crime Scene Section are still investigating the incident, and no charges have been filed.
