Parking authorities in St. Petersburg towed a vehicle with a four-month-old infant inside on Sunday, prompting police to scrutinize the parents for leaving their baby unattended, an activist said.
The incident was reported Sunday in a forum for users of the website of the Blue Bucket Society, a grassroots organization set up to protest the usage of blue flashing lights by officials, a practice that has been widely criticized for giving officials an unfair advantage in traffic.
A forum user cited the baby's father as saying he and his wife had only left the car for 10 minutes in the city's Nevsky district because they didn't want to have to wake the baby.
"They came back, and the car was gone. The wife nearly fainted and became hysterical. People ran over and said the car had just been towed," user ne2005 wrote.
"The action of the parents is strange, of course," ne2005 wrote, adding, however, that the behavior of the traffic police was equally strange in that they failed to notice there was a baby in the car.
The parents have now come under scrutiny from police who specialize in minors, with threats of social services paying a visit to check on the baby's welfare, the forum user reported.
It was unclear why the vehicle had been towed, but forum users agreed that it had likely been parked in a zone where stopping and parking were prohibited. No statement could be found on the incident on the police website Monday.
