2 Ugandan children die of suffocation in Juba after being trapped inside car for nearly 6 hours

JUBA — Two Ugandan children who went missing on Sunday in South Sudan’s capital Juba have been found dead inside a car at a garage at Customs on Tuesday, police authorities said.

Two-year-old Hibah Reya and her friend Kisitu Ishabu were stuck inside a car at a garage for about 6 hours and died due to lack of oxygen supply.

It is being speculated that the car’s child-lock mechanism could have automatically turned on, trapping them inside.

Since the widows were closed, it cut them off from fresh supply oxygen and also made it difficult for their voices to be heard from outside.

Speaking to Sudans Post this morning in Juba, Maj. Gen. Daniel Justin, Police spokesman said the children could have died due to suffocation in the car.

“The day before yesterday, they came to the garage in the morning as usual and around 11 am, they went missing and people started looking for them but later on in the evening, they were found dead in the car,” Gen. Justin explained.

“The children locked themselves inside one of the cars at a garage. We were informed about the incident and we went to the scene and took the bodies for postmortem,” he added.

He said two toddlers who were neighbors were playing inside a parked car at the garage when it locked its own, trapping them.

“The children used to move with their father to the work place. The father works in a garage at Custom and the children come to work in the morning and return home in the evening,” he said.

The Police spokesman said the death of the children is attributed to the negligence of their parents.

“We can’t do anything because the children died as a result of the negligence of their father. He brought his kids to his workplace and didn’t pay attention to them. The kids locked themselves inside the car without anybody knowing them,” he said.