Pensioner, 84, is found dead in bus ‘after being left inside on scorching hot day’ in Spain

A pensioner was found dead after allegedly being accidentally left inside a minibus in soaring heat. 

The body of the 84-year-old man, who has not been named, was discovered in Tomares near Seville in southwest Spain as temperatures reached a high of 32C (90F). 

Police in Spain are investigating the death and a Civil Guard source said overnight that ‘all options’ were still on the table.

The vehicle he was found inside is said to have been adapted to transport elderly people and is thought to belong to a local retirement home.

Civil Guard officers are taking witness statements and awaiting post-mortem results before deciding whether there has been any negligence in the man’s care and if arrests need to be made.

Initial reports are pointing to the unnamed man being on the minibus for several hours before he was discovered on Friday – and heat exhaustion being a possible cause of death according to the first emergency calls received.

The post-mortem is expected to take place today at Seville’s Forensic Medicine Institute.

This summer has seen a spate of deaths involving children being left in vehicles during the Europe-wide heatwave. 

In June two children were found dead in a car in the small southern French town of Carpentras. 

The boys, aged just two and four, were found in a family car parked outside their grandmother’s house in the Bois de l’Ubac neighbourhood of the town.

The brothers suffered cardiac arrest as temperatures reached a sweltering 40C, and while services were called to the scene, resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful. 

Last month a toddler died after being left for seven hours in high temperatures inside a nursery transport vehicle near a famous Portuguese tourist viewpoint.

The 18-month-old girl was said to have been ‘forgotten’ inside the vehicle in Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus River, directly opposite Lisbon.

It was parked by the access to the giant religious Cristo Rei shrine featuring a tall statue of Jesus Christ with open arms facing the Portuguese capital.

Hundreds of tourists are said to have passed by the spot where the little girl called Sofia was slowly dying in temperatures around 30C (86F) without seeing her behind the darkened and closed windows of the seven-seater SUV.

Paramedics and police were alerted just before 4pm on July 23 after the child’s mum went to collect her and was told she had never arrived at the nursery.

Desperate attempts to revive her by emergency medical responders after she was discovered in a ‘critical condition’ inside a Peugeot 5008 outside the main nursery campus proved unsuccessful and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

In May last year a three-year-old boy died in a popular Spanish tourist town after being found trapped inside a parked car in eighty degree heat.

Emergency responders including police and paramedics were sent to the scene after a 999 call from a member of the public.

They tried to revive him for several minutes after freeing him from the vehicle and discovering he didn’t have a heartbeat.

The child was then rushed to a local hospital where he was certified dead.

The drama happened in Linares in the Andalucian province of Jaen, home to the Andres Segovia House Museum dedicated to celebrated classical guitarist Andrés Segovia.