The police on Monday were searching for a man and a woman connected to the death of a 3-year-old boy abandoned at a hospital in Brooklyn, according to an internal police report.
Around 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, the 24-year-old woman, who is believed to be the child’s mother, and her 38-year-old boyfriend took the boy to SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens, the report said.
The boy was already showing signs of rigor mortis, an indication that he had died before arriving at the hospital, according to the report.
Hospital police officers contacted the Police Department around 11:30 a.m. to report the incident. By then, the man and woman had left the hospital, jumped in a white sedan and sped off. The license plate on the car did not appear to be the one assigned to it.
The city medical examiner will perform an autopsy to determine how the child died.
It was the most recent in a string of fatal crimes against children in New York.
Last month, the death of a 3-year-old boy who died in December was ruled a homicide, the police said.
Officers on Dec. 13 responded to a 911 call in Queens about the boy, Elias Rosado. The boy was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. As of Monday, no arrests had been made.
Elias died from a gastric rupture and a condition that causes inflammation in the chest, according to Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner. They were caused by blunt force, Ms. Bolcer said.
On Tuesday, a 4-year-old boy died after he was found near fentanyl around 8 a.m. at a homeless shelter on Glenwood Road in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Emergency medical workers used Narcan, an overdose-reversing medication, to treat the boy, whose name has not been released. The authorities are still investigating whether drugs played a role in his death.
The boy’s parents were arrested at the shelter on Wednesday, according to the police and a senior law enforcement official.
The parents, Miriam Elkayam, 26, and Yitzchok Sklar, 32, both of Brooklyn, were charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and abandonment of a child, the police said.