Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent in which a two-year-old girl from Bam­boo Set­tle­ment, Val­sayn, was ac­ci­den­tal­ly crushed to death un­der her fa­ther's van last week.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 7 pm on Oc­to­ber 15, when Sabel­la Be­har­ry, of Nab­bie Street, Bam­boo Set­tle­ment No 2, and her moth­er and fa­ther were prepar­ing to go out to buy din­ner.

Po­lice said Be­har­ry was wait­ing with her moth­er in the fam­i­ly's front porch as her fa­ther was turn­ing his pick-up truck in the yard. The child's moth­er then went back in­side for her milk bot­tle.

Left mo­men­tar­i­ly un­at­tend­ed, Be­har­ry re­port­ed­ly ran out of the porch and to­wards her fa­ther's re­vers­ing ve­hi­cle. She was knocked down and her head was crushed un­der the rear tyre of the ve­hi­cle.

Her fa­ther told po­lice that he ini­tial­ly be­lieved he had hit a large rock, but was alert­ed to the trag­ic ac­ci­dent by the wails of his wife, who came out­side to find her daugh­ter's body un­der the ve­hi­cle.

Be­har­ry was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where she suc­cumbed to her in­juries last Fri­day.

A post-mortem was per­formed on her body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day.

Emo­tion­al rel­a­tives who went to iden­ti­fy her body and view the au­top­sy re­fused to speak with me­dia per­son­nel.

Be­har­ry's par­ents, who are said to be trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent, were ques­tioned by in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions will de­cide if the par­ents should be charged with neg­li­gence once the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed. How­ev­er, they said charges were un­like­ly.

Be­har­ry's death is the sec­ond time in a lit­tle over a year that a tod­dler was killed by her par­ents' ve­hi­cle in a freak ac­ci­dent.

In Sep­tem­ber last year, one-and-a-half-year-old Salsabi­la Mo­hammed was crushed un­der her fa­ther Ash­meed's van at their Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas, home in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. Mo­hammed was rak­ing leaves with her moth­er when she ran to­wards her fa­ther's van as he was re­vers­ing in­to their yard. Her fa­ther was not charged for neg­li­gence.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the lat­est in­ci­dent are con­tin­u­ing.