Two men were arrested in Welkom on Saturday after a child was left in a locked car in blazing heat outside a shopping mall for almost two hours, Beeld reported on Monday.
Car guards Morné Nagel and Abel Modemoeng went to see what was happening when the car's alarm went off around 2.30pm in the parking lot of the Goldfields mall.
When they saw the child they called the police and paramedics.
Annali Snoer, a Netcare 911 paramedic, used an oxygen cylinder to break a window and pass the girl water and a wet ambulance blanket.
Temperatures were in the high 30s.
Centre security made three announcements for the owner of the car in the mall and at the nearby casino.
Two young men who had gone shopping for shoes casually walked to the car at 4.30pm, Beeld reported. They said the car's owner had run away.
Both were taken into custody on a charge of child neglect.
The child's 23-year-old mother was summoned to the scene and said the men had taken the child in the car without her permission.
The child was stabilised in the ambulance.
In a separate case, a woman, Shelly Khumalo, will appear in the Vereeniging Magistrate's Court on Monday on charges of child neglect after allegedly leaving her two young children in a parked car at a shopping mall.
She also allegedly resisted arrest and assaulted a police officer. – Sapa