Police: Girl Left Behind In School Bus Died After 3 Hours
NHK has learned that investigators probing the heatstroke death of a 3-year-old girl believe she died about three hours after she was trapped in a school bus in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.
Kawamoto China was left behind in the bus at Kawasaki Kindergarten in the city of Makinohara shortly before 9 a.m. on Monday and was found after about five hours. Sources told NHK that investigators believe she died before noon.
The head of the nursery school, Masuda Tatsuyoshi, drove the bus on that day. He offered an apology at a news conference on Wednesday.
The investigators said the girl had been sitting in the fifth row from the front, and when she was found shortly after 2 p.m., she was lying at the foot of a third-row seat. Her clothes were found on a seat further in the front, near the door.
Police believe the girl moved around the bus as the temperature rose and her condition worsened.