By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - Sydney police found little Leo Nguyen, unconscious and dying, strapped in the back of his parents' black BMW in temperatures hotter than Death Valley.
As Detective Inspector Mark Farrell pulled the 2-year-old from the car and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the front lawn of a house, another detective drenched a towel from a tap in a desperate effort to bring down the little boy's temperature.
When an ambulance arrived, police took the wheel for the high-speed drive through rush-hour traffic to hospital, but it was too late.
The thieves who had stolen Leo's parents' car had also taken a child's life.
Leo died in Sydney's Liverpool Hospital, his distraught parents by his bedside, from a heart attack brought about by heat stress. The temperature inside the car had reached nearly 60 degrees - hotter than the heat of the day in the Sahara and California's Death Valley.
Australia is shocked by the death of the boy, whose mother left him briefly in the back of the car to run into a supermarket to buy noodles.
The woman, who will not face charges, left the engine running, the windows wound up and the air-conditioning on to keep him cool on a day temperatures hit 28 degrees.
The thieves who took the car from Sydney's western suburb of Cabramatta and then abandoned it less than 1km away with Leo still inside could face murder charges, say police.
A police dragnet that criss-crossed Cabramatta and surrounding suburbs did not find the BMW for 2 1/2 hours.
Police did not use helicopters because they were on other duties.
They have asked witnesses to come forward, and yesterday afternoon were examining, frame by frame, tape from security cameras sited near the scene of the theft in the hope of identifying the thieves.
The supermarket owner said a friend, who was watching the car, ran in within two minutes to say it had been stolen.
The boy's mother screamed: "Call the police."
Cabramatta police began a hunt but admitted later that no police helicopters were available for the search.
When they found Leo he was unconscious in temperatures they said were like an oven.
Doctors said Leo would have gone into heat distress rapidly.
They estimated the temperature inside a car could rise as much as 30 or 40 degrees above the outside temperature.
Manhunt after boy dies in car
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