A four-year-old girl was found dead inside the family car where she had gone to wait after her mother promised to take her out soon, police said.
Local police were informed of the tragedy at a house in the Thepharak 5 community on Pracha Samosorn Road in tambon Nai Mueang of Mueang district at 2.30pm on Tuesday.
The distraught 34-year-old woman told police that she had arrived home and told her daughter that they would go out later. She then went inside the house to take a rest and assumed that her daughter had gone to see a grandmother who lived nearby.
Later she went outside to her car and saw her daughter lying still inside. She brought the girl out, tried to wake her and called rescue workers, but it was too late.
CCTV video from the property showed the girl entering the car by rear right door and closing it. No one else was there, said Pol Col Yosawat Kaewsuebtanyanit, chief of the Mueang Khon Kaen police station.
The girl was inside the car for a long time and might have suffocated in the heat, he said. Police are questioning people further before concluding the cause of the death.