The couple were arrested by PSP Portalegre for allegedly leaving their six-year-old son alone in a car parked in a car park next to a bar in this city, police said this Thursday.
The son of the detained couple was placed under the guardianship of the country, and by court order the process was reduced to an investigation, a PSP source told Lusa this Thursday.
A source from the PSP Portalegre district command told Lusa that the Portalegre court also applied the measure of identification and duration of residence (TIR) to the child’s parents.
Speaking to Lusa, Commissioner João Paulo Marmelo of the PSP Portalegre command said that the couple, a 25-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman, are suspected of the crime of exposing and abandoning a minor.
According to the same source, authorities became aware of the situation early Wednesday morning, “around 2:45 a.m.,” when a PSP agent went to the lot to retrieve his vehicle and heard a minor crying.
“He heard a child crying and found that the child was sitting on some stairs, crying, cold, especially since the night was quite cold,” the commissioner said.
The child was “basically cold,” he insisted, adding: “From what we found out, he would have stayed in the car and gotten out and felt alone.”
“It was very cold, the temperature was about zero degrees, and I was actually in a state of shock, alone in the parking lot,” she emphasized.
Commissioner João Paulo Marmelo also said the boy was taken to the police station, where he was “consoled” and given a “hot drink” before agents were able to gather some information about what ultimately happened.
“After calming him down and giving him some comfort, we were able to collect some data. “In addition, using the registration number of the car he said he was in, we were able to identify the mother and then the father,” he said.
According to the person in charge, the child’s parents were in one of the bars located in the Plaza de la Repubblica in Portalegre, an area where the PSP local command is also located.
Thanks to “the steps taken below, PSP located the couple in the bar, they were arrested and notified to appear at the Portalegre prosecutor’s office on Wednesday afternoon,” he explained.