A one-year-old boy was strangled after a lift cord loop fell into his portable crib. Another boy, 13 months old, had his head caught between the exposed inner cord and cloth on the back of a Roman shade. And a four-year-old girl died after being tangled in the loop of a verticle blind cord that wasn’t attached to the wall or floor.
The blinds or shades in the deaths were made or imported by Lewis Hyman of Carson, Calif., and Vertical Land of Panama Beach City, Fla. But four other companies are also recalling their products as well. The massive recall involves about 5.5 million blinds or shades.
Pottery Barn Kids is recalling Roman shades after reports of six kids becoming entangled in the inner cord. Ikea has decided to recall Roman blinds after a 2-year-old boy was nearly strangled in a looped beaded chain. Target is recalling cloth and bamboo Roman shades made by Victoria Classics even though injuries haven’t been reported. Similarly, Lutron Shading Solutions is taking back its roller shades although it hasn’t received any negative reports.
For more info on the specific blinds being recalled, check out the web site for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
She apparently wanted to see what Daddy was doing. But Donald Haslem didn’t see his 2-year-old daughter when he was moving his Jeep Wrangler from his neighbor’s carport. When he pulled the Jeep forward, he realized that he had run something over, according to a news release from the Winter Haven, Fla., police department.
Laysha Haslem was pronounced dead at a local hospital on Friday. An average of two kids die each week as a result of being hit by cars in driveways, according to Kids and Cars, a safety advocacy group. Summer is a deadly season, as children tend to be outside. Click here for safety tips and how to teach your child about the dangers of cars.
The boy had disappeared from his mother’s sight and was later found face-down in the shallow end of the outdoor lagoon pool at Kalahari Resorts on Sunday. Hassan Itani, of Dearborn, Mich., didn’t know how to swim and had been playing with an older brother around the pool, which is from three to four feet deep, the Associated Press reported.
Police are investigating the accident at the resort in Sandusky, Ohio, which is billed as the nation’s largest water park. In May, Ohio state inspectors had told Kalahari managers that the park needed more lifeguards and that “many water rides were operated in a careless and unsafe manner.”
Kalahari management said this week that staffing level on Sunday was appropriate and included four head lifeguards and two supervisors.
A five-month-old Florida boy died after his mother accidently left him in her SUV when she went to work, police said. Gannon Werking had been in the car from about 8:30 a.m. Thursday until his mom discovered him the back seat of her gray Ford Edge at about 5 p.m., parked outside an office building, the Treasure Coast Palm reported.
A passerby called 911 after he saw Stephanie Werking “screaming hysterically” in the parking lot, authorities said. The high temperature in Vero Beach on Thursday was 90 degrees.
Three-year-old Damilyn McElveen of Baton Rouge, La. died today after accidentally being left in a daycare van. The blue-and-white van was parked outside of Wanda’s Kids World, according to the Advocate.
Apparently, the child was picked up by an employee of the daycare this morning, and then left in the van all day, when temperatures were in the 90s. Police were notified just before 3 p.m. that daycare workers had found the child in the afternoon, attempted and failed to revive her using CPR.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration has tips here on preventing such tragedies.
Photo by Jalalspages
If you think that teens take so many dumb risks because they believe they’re immortal, this study will make you think again.
University of Minnesota Medical School researcher Iris Browsky found that one in seven teens believes that they’ll die before age 35, and that such fatalism is strongly linked to greater risk taking behaviors, such as illicit drug use, suicide attempts, fighting and unsafe sexual activity.
“While conventional wisdom says that teens engage in risky behaviors because they feel invulnerable to harm, this study suggests that in some cases, teens take risks because they overestimate their vulnerability, specifically their risk of dying,” Borowsky said in a statement. “These youth may take risks because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake.”
The study found that nearly 25 percent of youth living in households that receive public assistance believe that they will die young, as do more than 29 percent of American-Indian, 26 percent of African-American, 21 percent of Hispanic and 15 percent of Asian youth. Just 10 percent of their Caucasian peers have such a pessimistic outlook on the future.
The two brothers, ages nine and 11, were struggling over a shotgun after an argument over video games. During the fight, the older boy accidently shot and killed his brother, according to officials near Jackson, Miss.
“The younger brother allegedly got mad because he got beat at some video games and got the gun,” Marshall County Sheriff Kenny Dickerson told the Associated Press. The boys’ father was apparently outside mowing the lawn when the shooting occurred on Tuesday. He told authorities that the gun was kept unloaded in a closet.
Watch that child! Warm weather brings out kids — and danger.
A 2-year-old Kansas City boy was killed Friday when a Chevy pickup truck struck him in the driveway. The boy had been playing in the yard and died a shortly after being taken to a hospital.
Police said that the motorist was not driving excessively, the Kansas City Star reported.
Melissa Miller’s son wandered off into his backyard and was mauled to death by the family’s pit bull. Now, the Texas mom being charged in the boy’s death. A grand jury on Wednesday returned an indictment that would charge Miller, 24, of criminally negligent homicide and injury to a child, both felonies.
Miller’s attorney said the charges were unfair to the “young, caring mother.” “It is unfortunate that the district attorney would not recognize that sometimes horrible accidents happen without there necessarily having been a crime committed,” attorney Matt Jones told the Austin American-Statesman.
According to Jones, the toddler was in his bed on March 26 when Miller woke up to help her 6-year-old daughter get ready for school. Miller apparently went back to bed afterwards. When she woke up at noon, she couldn’t find the boy and began searching for him.
Tyson’s body was found in the backyard around 12:30 p.m., where the family dog was chained. The 28-month-old child had suffered severe head and neck bites. The dog has since been euthanized.
Angela Dukes told police she was only trying to quiet the 9-month-old boy. But the pacifier apparently blocked the child’s breathing and killed him.
On Wednesday, Dukes, who was serving as the baby’s foster mother, was charged with felony unlawful conduct toward a child, the Associated Press reported. The 30-year-old Columbia, S.C., woman works as a neonatal nurse, and the incident occurred on Feb. 8, her first day of caring for the boy.