A 12-year-old boy in Riyadh died after his father forgot about him inside his car in the sweltering heat for three hours, local media said.

The man had left the boy asleep in the car and had gone shopping.

The man remembered his son three hours later and ran to the car, only to find that his son had suffocated from the heat, burnews.com online paper said.

A post-mortem exam carried out by King Saud Medical City (KSMC) on the boy’s body found that intense heat had had a negative impact on his blood, kidney and muscles, which caused his organs to shut down, the paper said.