An eight-month-old baby girl has died in agony after being scalded with boiling water when her brother switched on the hot tap into her bath.
The horrific incident took place in the city of Valjevo in Serbia, in the home of a family with four children, while the mother, named only as S. N. 25, was expecting her fifth baby.
The tragedy reportedly happened when one of the children, the four-year-old brother, poured boiling water into the tub the baby was in it. The mum was not in the bathroom at the time of the incident on Sunday, 22nd July.
A neighbour told local media: “The woman who lives next to us ran from the house on the street and started to scream ‘Help, help, my baby is dying!'”
He took her and the baby girl to the hospital, where doctors did their best to save the life of the eight-month-old, but she was found to have succumbed to her burns.
The neighbour told local media: “While I was driving them to the hospital, the baby had no signs of life”.
The baby reportedly died after her heart stopped because of the pain from the burns. Neighbours claim that at the time of the tragedy, the mother was in the house with two children, while the father was in the park with the other two. The children are two, three and four years old.
The neighbour added: “It was terrible! The police also came, and the children saw it all… Really scary”.
Some neighbours told local media that noise, screams, and children’s cries are constantly heard coming from their house and that the children seem a little neglected.
The family lived there for several months, and the parents are reportedly unemployed.
The investigation into the tragedy is ongoing and child protection services are also reportedly investigating.
