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16th Jun 2022

Four-year-old dies after being locked in school bus for hours on hot day

Ellen Fitzpatrick

A tragedy.

A four year old girl has died after being left in a locked school bus for almost eight hours on a hot day.

The child was left in the vehicle from 8.30am until 3pm in the Hungarian village of Tomajmonostora.

Named locally as Flora Inez, she was picked up on Tuesday June 7th to go to nursery school when the driver allegedly forgot about her on the bus after he failed to check that each child had gotten off.

Nobody could hear her cries for help as the bus began to slowly heat up to 50 degrees, but when she was discovered, she was still alive but unconscious.

Paediatrician Dr. Orsolya Ács told Hungarian outlet Bors: “More than likely, her body became so hot that she dried up because she sweated and exhaled all the water from her body.

“She was unable to correct the elevated body temperature, although the body always tries to cool itself in the beginning of similar cases.”

Flora was rushed to hospital in an air ambulance after suffering from heatstroke and remained in ICU for three days at a hospital in Debrecen, the capital of Hungary’s Northern Great Plain region.

Flora sadly didn’t make it and the bus driver, whose identity is being kept private, is now reportedly being given psychological treatment at a facility in Szolnok after suffering a nervous breakdown.

His son told Bors: “My father was very worn out by what happened. I was specifically asked not to tell anyone until the investigations were closed, but I don’t have enough information about the terrible case anyway.”

A criminal case has been opened by police and an internal investigation has been launched by the company that employed the bus driver.