was found early Sunday afternoon<\/a>\u00a0by a driver of an InterCity bus from Whangarei to Auckland.<\/p>\nA 27-year-old woman was due to appear in the North Shore District Court on Monday charged with ill treatment of a child.<\/p>\n
The child had been in the suitcase for nearly an hour wearing only a nappy, RNZ understands.<\/p>\n
Police were called at 12.50pm after a passenger asked for access to the luggage compartment during a planned stop in Kaiwaka, Northland.<\/p>\n
Detective Inspector Simon Harrison said the driver became concerned when he noticed the bag moving.<\/p>\n
“When the driver opened the suitcase, they discovered the two-year-old girl,” he said.<\/p>\n
Harrison said the little girl was reported to be “very hot”, but otherwise unharmed.<\/p>\n
She was taken to hospital in a “minor” condition for an extensive medical assessment.<\/p>\n
“We would like to acknowledge and commend the bus driver, who noticed something wasn’t right and took immediate action, preventing what could have been a far worse outcome,” Harrison said.<\/p>\n
“Police inquiries into this incident are ongoing and further charges cannot be ruled out. Oranga Tamariki has also been notified.”<\/p>\n
An InterCity spokesperson said the company was aware of an incident involving a passenger on one of its services earlier on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“Police were called to respond, and they are now investigating the matter.<\/p>\n
“No one was harmed during the incident and the service has resumed. As this is now an active police investigation, we are unable to comment further.”<\/p>\n
Oranga Tamariki said it was working with the child’s family to ensure they were safe.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oranga Tamariki is looking into the care of a two-year-old found alive inside a suitcase in a bus luggage compartment. The toddler\u00a0was found early Sunday afternoon\u00a0by a driver of an InterCity bus from Whangarei to Auckland. A 27-year-old woman was due to appear in the North Shore District Court on Monday charged with ill treatment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14512,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510\/revisions\/14512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}