A five-month-old baby is dead after Portsmouth police say the father may have accidentally left the baby in his minivan for several hours on Friday.
Police say five-month-old Jeremy Rivera's father thought he dropped his son off at the Children's Harbor Daycare Friday morning. However, when he went back to pick the baby up Friday afternoon, he realized he never took the baby out of the minivan. Paramedics pronounced the baby dead at the scene.
"Bad things happen to good people sometimes and from what I know so far, that's what has happened here," said Portsmouth Commonwealth Attorney Earle Mobley. "At this point, it doesn't look like there was any foul play, no history of any violence on this child or any of their other children."
Mobley told NewsChannel 3 the father left his Suffolk home Friday morning and dropped off his five and six-year-old children at a Portsmouth preschool. He was supposed to drop the infant off at Children's Harbor, but he forgot and went to his job in downtown Portsmouth and parked the vehicle. All the while, Baby Jeremy was in the hot minivan for nearly five hours. It wasn't until the father went back to the daycare around 3 p.m. Friday that he realized what he'd done.
"[He] actually got out of the car walked up [to the daycare] and then realized that he had not dropped the child off earlier in the morning," said Mobley.
The victim was taken to the Medical Examiner's Office pending an autopsy.
The cause of death has not been concluded at this time.
No charges have been filed at this time.
