FIVE-MONTH-OLD DIES AFTER BEING LEFT IN CAR

Author: By Scott S. Greenberger, and Andy Dabilis, Globe Staff Date: 09/20/2000 Page: A1 Section: Metro/Region

A Jamaica Plain infant died yesterday after she spent an entire workday in the back of a steamy car where she had been unwittingly left by her father, who was supposed to drop her off at a day care center in West Roxbury.

Peter Bos, 31, drove his Saab straight to work at 8:15 a.m. yesterday with 5-month-old Aliyah strapped in her rear-facing car seat in back, police say.

The West Roxbury stop was not made - until some eight hours later.

Aliyah Bos was pronounced dead at 6:17 at Children's Hospital last night, about 45 minutes after police and medical technicians rushed to Linda's Home Family Child Care.

Police said that Bos parked his car in an outdoor lot with the windows rolled up at 9:20 a.m. without noticing the child in the back seat. Later in the day his wife, Leslie, called to remind him to pick up the child at day care.

But when Bos arrived at the day care center about 5:40 p.m., an employee told him the baby had never been dropped off.

Bos raced back to his car and found the baby unconscious in the back seat.

Emergency medical technicians inserted a breathing tube and gave the infant heart medications as they rushed her to the hospital, but doctors could not revive her.

At a news conference, Deputy Supt. Larry Robicheau said the death appears to be a "tragic accident."

Homicide detectives interviewed the couple and gathered evidence from the car. Sergeant Detective Danny Keeler said no charges have been filed.

Police said they had not yet determined the cause of death.

Yesterday's temperatures reached 78 degrees outside, but it was considerably hotter inside a closed, dark car.

In a similar case in Newton, N.J., last June, an official from that state's Division of Youth and Family Services said the interior of a car can heat up to 125 degrees in about 15 minutes when the temperature outside is in the high 70s.

On the porch of the home where the Bos family lives with their 3-year-old daughter, people gathered to grieve and console them last night.

In West Roxbury, neighbors on Chilton Road near Linda's Home Family Child Care were shocked to hear of the tragedy.

Betty Snow, who lives four doors from Linda's, noticed flashing lights and a commotion yesterday afternoon in the neighborhood of single-family homes near Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Parkway.

Snow found yellow tape strung across the street and lights flashing from a cluster of fire engines, emergency medical trucks, and police cruisers.

A neighbor told her that a man came to pick up his child at Linda's Day Care, but owner Linda Nelson told him, "you didn't drop her off."

"I can't believe he forgot the baby," Snow said.

A similar situation occurred last May in Portland, Maine, when a lawyer forgot to drop off his 4-month-old daughter at a day-care center on his way to work, leaving her strapped in the back seat of his Buick LeSabre for four hours.

That infant recovered after about two weeks at Maine Medical Center. A grand jury declined to press charges against John S. Campbell, who initially credited doctors for reviving his unconscious daughter but later said she was "conscious and making baby noises" when he discovered her in a parking garage.

Campbell accused the police of violating his privacy and wrongly stating that the baby had lapsed into a coma.