Car seat of forgotten child (file)
Car seat of forgotten child (file)Flash 90

Police forces were alerted and rushed to save a one-and-a-half year old infant from suffocation in a locked car in Elad, located in Israel's coastal plain area to the east of Tel Aviv, in what appears to be an egregious case of negligence.

Two police from the Rosh Ha'ayin station were called to the scene on Yohanan Ben-Zakai Street by passersby who spotted the infant locked in a car.

The young child was found flushed and sweating profusely from the heat, strapped into his seatbelt in the sealed vehicle. The officers quickly broke through the glass of the car in order to save the child's life.

Thankfully the infant did not require medical treatment, but was taken to the police station since his parents could not be located initially.

After using public announcement systems to call for the parents, the child's father showed up at the police station where he was taken in for investigation over suspicion of negligence in the incident.

According to Yedioth Aharonoth, an initial investigation indicated that the father apparently went to pray, leaving his infant son locked in the car.

There have been several tragic cases of infants dying as a result of being negligently locked in their parents' cars. Just this May an 18-month-old baby died after being forgotten in a car in the community of Beit Haggai, near Hevron.

Several similar horrific cases occurred last summer, two of them in Samaria, in the communities of Shilo and Dolev, on consecutive days. Five Arab children aged 3 to 6 died in a similar tragedy near Hevron.