Milan, they leave their 8-month-old daughter alone in the car and go to a party: “We checked her on a video call”

To check on their daughter, who was just 8 months old, they considered a telephone video call sufficient. The little girl was alone in the car. It had been left in a restaurant car park in Cusago late on Saturday evening. The Cornaredo police found her. They managed to trace the identity of the parents, who were from Milan. The two, aged 41 and 31, were celebrating a friend’s wedding.

They explained to the police that they had monitored her remotely with a video call telephone. In their opinion it was a sufficient control method: a video call with the smartphone in front of the child. The windows of the parked car were closed. The parents explained that they did it to prevent her from getting sick.

The couple was reported for child abandonment. The little girl, who is in good health, was nevertheless returned to their care.

The couple’s choice was voluntary, but leaving a child alone in the car is highly risky behavior. In 25 years there have been 11 victims, children, not abandoned, but involuntarily forgotten in cars in Italy. The latest case is that of a one-year-old girl who died in a car in the Cecchignola area of ​​Rome last June.

Is called Forgotten baby syndrome. The first known death in Italy occurred in July 1998 in Catania, with the death of 2-year-old Andrea. The others, about ten in total, occurred in various areas. The children were all between 11 months and two years old. They were usually forgotten by one of the parents, convinced that they had taken them to nursery instead.

Since November 2019, law 157 has come into force in Italy obliges the use of anti-abandonment seatswhich signal the presence of the little one with a noise when the car is closed.