A two-year-old girl has been found alive in a suitcase stored in a bus luggage compartment in New Zealand.
The bus driver noticed movement inside the bag during a planned stop in Kaiwaka – 60 miles north of Auckland – on Sunday after a passenger asked for access to the luggage compartment.
When the driver opened the suitcase, they discovered the girl.
The child was said to be “very hot, but otherwise appeared physically unharmed”, according to Detective Chief Simon Harrison.
The toddler was taken to hospital, where she remained on Sunday to undergo an extensive medical assessment.
Detectives did not say how long the girl was in the suitcase, or which cities the bus was travelling between.
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A 27-year-old woman, who has not been named, was arrested and charged with ill-treatment or neglect of a child. DCI Harrison said further charges are not being ruled out. Children’s services have also been informed.
She appeared at North Shore District Court on Monday, where court documents seen by Stuff, a New Zealand news media website, allege she was travelling from Whangarei to Auckland by bus and placed the child in the vehicle’s luggage compartment.
The court papers say her actions were “likely to cause adverse effects to health including suffocation, dehydration, carbon monoxide poisoning, heat exhaustion, psychological trauma” to the child.
The woman’s lawyer requested her client remain anonymous and be remanded before having to enter a plea. The defendant will return to the same court on Tuesday.
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Entrada Travel Group, which operates New Zealand’s national bus line, InterCity, told Sky News’ US partner network NBC that the incident involved one of its buses.
“Police were called to respond and are investigating the matter. No one was harmed during the incident, and the service resumed,” the group said in its statement.
InterCity states on its website that children up to two years old can travel for free on an adult’s lap. Children aged three and older require a child ticket and need to travel with a guardian.
DCI Harrison praised the InterCity bus driver, “who noticed something wasn’t right and took immediate action, preventing what could have been a far worse outcome”.
