Baby dies after being left by hot shower to ‘clear cough’

A baby has died after being left by a hot shower in the middle of the night to clear his cough.

One-year-old Mordechai Halpern woke up after 3am on Thursday night with a bad cough. His father said he gave the infant a bottle filled with water and lemon juice but that this did not help the situation. New York Daily News reports that the 27-year-old told police that he then wheeled the baby into the bathroom in his pram. He turned on the shower to create a humidifier, which he thought would clear the child's cough. At 5am, the baby's mother awoke to find that the one-year-old was unconscious in his pram. Mordechai was brought to Maimonides Medical Centre but he was pronounced dead less than an hour later. A postmortem is expected to be carried out soon.