Mum Who Left Baby in Hot Car for 5-hours While Playing Bingo, Visits Him on Critical Hospital Bed

Blistering heat is not something us Brits see too often, but residents of Australia do. We’ve sad news to bring you from Melbourne this week of a mother who locked her baby boy in the car so she could gamble in a pub. And not just a quick gamble either; she was gone for five whole hours!

Kaija Millar, 32, will be allowed to see her son for the first time this week, after the horrifying incident last Thursday. Police had previously forbidden her to go within a 200-metre radius of the hospital, or 5-metres from her son. Temperatures that day were a smoulder 33*C, but inside the car, it would have taken only 30-minutes for that heat to reach almost 52*C.

What happens to a child’s body in a very hot car? According to an Ambulance Victoria study, within 7-minutes, the child will be thirsty, sweating and in severe discomfort. Within 10-minutes, the child will suffer ‘serious injury’ and brain damage and it only takes 20-minutes for a child to die in these circumstances. Poor Eston was locked in for five hours!

Appearing in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday, a week after the police alleged she locked baby Eston in the car, the court heard Kaija had been forbidden to go anywhere near her son who is currently in the Royal Children’s Hospital in a critical condition.

On arrival to the hospital, the bingo mad mum was flanked by many supporters, even her father, as the press zoomed in. Magistrate, Sue Cameron, amended the conditions of her bail to allow her to see her child, but only if she were accompanied by her own mother or a Department of Health and Human Services caseworker.

Touch and Go

Baby Eston’s father who is estranged from the mother, is keeping a vigil at his son’s bedside, where doctors have revealed he stands a 50/50 chance of survival. The courts have been told that the chances of him pulling through remain unclear. All this has come about because mummy wanted five whole hours to herself to play bingo!

Miller has been charged with negligently causing serious injury and reckless conduct endangering life. Police had failed to supply the courts with evidence that alleged the mother had intended to cause harm to the baby ‘or worse’. Which is why she was granted visitation rights.

Hold up. She locked her baby in the car in the smouldering heat, for five hours to daub tickets – and the courts say this is insufficient evidence of wanting to cause harm? Wow. “I need an allegation the act was in some way deliberate,” Magistrate Sue Cameron said. “The charge alleges recklessness.”

Sergeant, Mark Higginbotham, lashed out with words at the mother, accusing her of having a “disregard for the welfare” of her own child. Plus. He voiced his concerns on how she posed as an “unidentified risk” to the baby.

The mother remains free on community bail at a secret address (thanks to a court gag order) and she has been forced to remove herself from all social media platforms, what with abuse coming from every corner of the globe.

It’s alleged, Millar had been struggling with gambling addiction which nobody knew anything about.