It was a rescue operation that lasted less than 10 minutes.

Yet, brief as it was, WO Azmi Hasan, 42, a warrant officer with the Singapore Civil Defence Force, couldn't take any chances.

The reason? The rescue operation involved a 6-month-old baby girl.

She lay strapped in her baby chair on the back seat of a locked BMW car crying, while her parents haplessly looked on.

They had accidentally locked the car doors with the key in the ignition and the engine running last Saturday morning, next to some shophouses along Kim Yam Road, off River Valley Road.

The baby's father, who is in his late 30s, had called the police at about 11.20am that morning.

The New Paper understands that he and his wife had accidentally closed the car door with the car key still in the ignition.

As the vehicle has an auto-locking system, the car doors got locked with the engine and air-conditioning still running.

WO Azmi told The New Paper: 'Seeing the baby trapped and crying inside, I really felt the sense of urgency to rescue her as fast as possible and get her out.'

He arrived with seven officers and decided the best way to rescue the baby was to break the glass window of the driver's seat.

WO Azmi explained: 'We did it because of the urgency of the situation and breaking the glass window was the fastest way possible to get the vehicle open.'

He used a palm-sized seat-belt cutter with a sharp metal point, normally used to cut the seatbelts of accident victims trapped in vehicles.

Corner of window

All it took was one knock, but the blow had to be angled at the corner of the car window, instead of in the centre, so that the glass shards wouldn't spray too far away.

Meanwhile, the parents looked on in anguish from the side.

Said WO Azmi: 'I wasn't really afraid.

'There was a distance of about 1m from the driver's seat to where the baby lay on the left hand side of the back seat.'

Once the car window was broken, SCDF officers cleared away the glass shards from the driver's seat and the floor of the car.

In all, the child had spent about 45 minutes in the locked car.

An SCDF spokesman said that the baby was not hurt, but as a precaution, she was taken in an ambulance to KK Women's and Children Hospital, accompanied by her mother.

Seeing the baby safe and sound, WO Azmi said, was the ultimate reward for a job well done.

WO Azmi, who has three daughters aged 4 to 10, understood the couple's anguish.

He said it's the third time he has rescued a baby from a locked vehicle.

'It's my job, I didn't feel nervous, I just focused on getting her out to safety.'

In March 2005, The Straits Times reported that a man kicked in the windscreen of his BMW, because his 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son were trapped in the car.

They could not unlock the doors from inside as their ship broker father had left the car key in the boot.