Australia: 5-year-old child found dead, tied in sleeping bag to “help him sleep”

A sordid news item. A five-year-old child died on Monday October 12 in Grafton, eastern Australia. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, he and his siblings, whose number was not specified, were found tied in sleeping bags with duct tape. A ribbon that would also have been used as a blindfold to hide their sight at bedtime. A way to “help them sleep”, according to the explanations of the victim’s father and mother-in-law reported by the Australian daily.

The police went to this house around 6:40 a.m. after being alerted that “a boy had been found unresponsive at his home,” New South Wales police said in a press release. “Officers from Coffs/Clarence Police District attended the scene and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the boy. Paramedics from NSW Ambulance arrived shortly afterwards; However, they were unable to resuscitate the five-year-old child,” specifies the same source.

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A long-awaited autopsy

An investigation is underway and an autopsy must be carried out to determine the precise circumstances of the death and to establish whether the immobilization of the child could have played a role in his death. The home was placed under surveillance and examined by forensic experts. Present when the police arrived, the father and stepmother had not been arrested at the time of the first information reported. The other children were placed with relatives, New South Wales police said.

The family had been followed for at least a year by the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), an administration in New South Wales particularly responsible for child protection, according to the first elements of the investigation reported by the Sydney Morning Herald. A check had already been carried out the previous year, in particular regarding the deceased boy, who had an intellectual disability.