Girl, 4, suffocates in car after feckless dad left her alone in back seat for NINE hours while he was playing with his phone

A GIRL suffocated to death in the back seat of her dad’s car after he left her alone for nine hours while he was playing on the phone.

Dad Hu only remembered about his four-year-old daughter Qi Qi when his wife was alerted that the girl wasn’t at school.

It took him a few moments to think where Qi Qi could have gone, until he found her lying at the back of his car at 5pm.

He was driving her to Wanyuan Kindergarten school just after 8am on Monday when he received an urgent phone call from work.

They had reached the school’s front gates, so he parked, and took the call.

When he got back into the car, Hu claims he assumed Qi Qi had gone to school herself, so he immediately headed off for work.

NOT MY FAULT

Hu told local media: “I answered the call and forgot to check. I didn’t notice until my wife called me at 5pm asking where our daughter was.”

Hu’s wife had gone to the school to fetch Qi Qi, only to be told she had not been at school that day.

“I thought and thought and then finally found her in the back seat in the footwell,” Hu said.

Qi Qi had suffocated to death and was declared dead shortly after being taken to Yiyang Central Hospital.

“They couldn’t save her,” Hu, who is a car salesman, said.

Blaming the school he said: “The school usually calls or sends messages asking why a pupil isn’t there, but why didn’t they contact us this time?”

Asked whether he felt the school should bear 100 percent of the blame, Hu said: “In my opinion, they are more liable. Had they called, I would’ve noticed sooner.”

‘I GOT DISTRACTED’

Call logs from Hu’s mobile phone showed that he answered a call at 8:46am, but the conversation lasted all but 12 seconds.

Hu said he believed he may have been distracted by messages on other applications such as instant-messaging service WeChat.

He said: “There are three teachers and only around 10 pupils at the school. How could they not have noticed one pupil missing?”

While the Wanyuan Kindergarten has yet to release a statement about the tragedy, the Heshan Education Bureau says the school had already reached a settlement with the family – offering them damages in the amount of £3,650.

The bureau said their preliminary findings indicate Hu may not have driven his child to the nursery school at all.

They suggested Hu answered his phone on the way to her school and became distracted by the nature of the call, resulting in his ultimately forgetting about his daughter and only remember again when his wife called him some nine hours later.

Further investigation is still ongoing.

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