A painful story was palpable in three places on Friday.

In court, it was the steely gaze of Zeljana Kosovac, released on bail for charges of criminal negligence causing the death of a three-year-old.

Patrick Adamski was found unconscious yesterday, after being left in a hot car for hours.

At the parking lot where he was found, a makeshift memorial grew.

And across the street from the child’s house, a shocked neighbour cried quietly on her front step. She’d been planning to bring the boy and his brother coloured paper, as she had brought them toys her son outgrew a couple of times before.

“Oh my god,” Natalia Mahno said, processing the information she’d just received. “I am so sorry about this.”







Kosovac, 50, was the child’s caregiver. Police say she’d pick him up in the mornings, then they believe he was taken to a second care facility for the day. Later on, she’d pick the boy up again and take him home.

When he was found, it was in her red Hyundai — parked near Burnamthorpe and Mills Rds. The high on Thursday was 26 C, and the child was estimated to have been in the car four hours when he was found by a superintendent.

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Around 1 p.m. the superintendent smashed in the vehicle’s window, and the child was rushed to hospital but could not be revived.

In her brief appearance at the College Park courthouse Friday, Kosovac was dressed in a grey long sleeved T-shirt, her dark hair freely falling on her shoulders. She kept her gaze straight ahead, making just one passing glance back at the courtroom gallery that was packed with reporters.

The Crown did not oppose bail, and Kosovac left the court flanked by officers. She put on dark sunglasses and didn’t utter a word or change her neutral expression as she left the building. Two other men accompanied her for the long, silent walk out of the courthouse.

One of them marched ahead and made several attempts to hail a cab before one stopped, amid the cameras of waiting journalists.

Bail conditions for Kosovac’s release, on her own recognizance, include prohibited contact with the parents of the dead child, Justyna and Dariusz Adamski, supervision to be around children under 14, and a relinquishing of her passport within 12 hours of release.

Toronto Police Const. David Hopkinson said that it was too early to say whether it was the temperature inside the car that caused the toddler’s death, but that the case serves as a stark reminder of the perils of hot vehicles.

“It’s a horrible reminder,” he said of the case.

Jolanta Pawlowsk lives just down the street from the family and had just found out what happened.

“They are the nicest neighbours, the nicest family,” she said, adding the parents have another young son.

“The boys were very, very, very well behaved and gentle.”

Pawlowsk has lived there for 15 years and has known the family for as long as they’d been there, which was about three or four years. She got to know them because they often played in their front yard.

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“I can’t imagine what they’re going through. How is it really possible to do something like this?”

In the parking lot where the child was found, general contractor Roger Reynolds and his co-worker Lisa Taschuk stopped to pay their respects.

They said they were working in the adjacent building all day Thursday and passed by the lot where the car was parked several times on their way to get coffee and lunch. They didn’t notice anything was amiss until the emergency crews arrived.

“We knew something wasn’t right, with the brigade of emergency vehicles coming down the road,” Taschuk said. “You just don’t expect something like this to happen, but every year it seems to happen.”

“The baby seat was sitting right here,” Reynolds said, gesturing to the sidewalk, steps away from the vigil. “When I got home, I hugged my four-year-old and just kept hugging. I didn’t sleep last night.

“I keep asking myself, could I do something like that?”

Laying four white roses at the vigil and holding her eight-month-old son in her arms, Helen Ksiazek cried. She didn’t know the boy or his family, but lives down the road.

“I’m overcome with so much sadness this happened. As a mother of a son, it is very upsetting,” she said, kissing her sons cheeks and stroking his head.

Linda Canning and her son walked over from a neighbouring building and laid yellow carnations down in between stuffed animals and notes. She said she watched the scene unfold from her balcony yesterday.

“I saw that car seat sitting there and it breaks my heart. We keep visiting the vigil because we want the family to know we are thinking of them,” Canning said.

Larry Armstrong lives across the street from the building, and arrived with a bouquet of flowers and a prayer.

“It just really hit me,” Armstrong said. “I wish I had a child of my own, and I don’t. I just feel so bad for the family.”

After saying a prayer while dropping off the flowers, Armstrong said he’d continue to pray for the boy.

“I just pray to God he didn’t suffer,” he said.

Lisa Frenette brought her two young sons to pay their respects at the parking lot where the boy, not much older than either of them, died.

The two brothers brought a brown stuffed bear and moose, with a red maple leaf stitched to their chests, to leave at the back of the building.

With files from Star staff and the Canadian Press