The parents of a three-year-old boy who died in horrific circumstances have appealed for better safety messages in the hope of preventing further such tragedies.
When the parents of the toddler, who cannot be named, put him down for his regular afternoon nap last January 20, they could hear him ‘babbling away’.
But a coroner’s court in Christchurch, New Zealand heard that when the father went to check on his son at about 4pm, he was not in his bed.
He found the child ‘in front of the curtain with a cord wrapped around the front of his neck’, coroner Heather McKenzie wrote in her findings.
The dad carried the toddler to his mother and they called the emergency services and started CPR.
Paramedics arrived just five minutes later but the boy could not be revived, the NZ Herald reported.
‘(His) parents described him as their beautiful, cheeky, and sweet little buddy,’ Ms McKenzie said on Monday.
‘They are devastated and heartbroken to have lost him and also suffer seeing (their daughter) grieving for her brother.’
The parents of a three-year boy who died in horrific circumstances have appealed for better safety messages in the hope of preventing further such tragedies (stock image)
‘They want to avoid the same thing happening to any other parent/family and believe that there should be better safety messages regarding blind cords.’
The family had been at the beach on the morning of the tragedy and after lunch put the boy for a sleep.
‘The day had been like any normal day, nothing was different, and (the boy) behaviour was normal for him,’ Ms McKenzie said.
‘(His father) thinks he closed the blind and curtain … and the bedroom door was closed. He heard (the child) ‘babbling away’ to himself as he usually does.’
The toddler’s bed was away from the wall and he often got up from it himself if he woke before his parents came for him, sometimes hiding behind the curtain in between the blinds.
The father told the police the cord wasn’t around his son’s whole neck, just the front.
‘The cord was used to pull the blind up and down. Usually (the boy’s mum) would remind (the dad) to put the blind up and wrap it high around the railing,’ the coroner said.
‘He did not think (the boy) had ever played with the cord before. Other than hiding behind the curtains, he had never been known to have jumped or played with them.’
Coroner McKenzie said there was nothing out of the ordinary in the child’s bedroom.
While sometimes the boy ‘stacked up his pillows to reach his drawers to get his books’, he had not done so that day.
‘It appears to me on the available evidence that (the boy) was playing in or otherwise near the blind, the cord became wrapped around the front of his neck, and he was unable to extricate himself,’ Ms McKenzie said.
‘I do not know how long he had been there before (his father) discovered him. In all of these circumstances, I find that (his) death was a tragic accident.
‘(The child) was a very much-loved son and brother. He is greatly missed.’
In Australia, a mandatory standard applies to internal blinds, curtains and window fittings produced after 2010, but there are currently no similar mandatory safety guidelines in New Zealand.
Ms McKenzie said that there were no recommendations she could make which would go further than those already made by Coroner Mary-Anne Borrowdale after the death of a 19-month old by accidental asphyxiation from a roman blind cord in 2018.
In that case, Ms Borrowdale said ‘The family tragically affected by this death were unaware of the hazard posed by inner blind cords, located at the reverse of the blind.
‘Their custom-made blind was supplied with no safety information.’
Ms Borrowdale quoted the co-author of a US study of window cord fatalities, Dr Gary Smith, who said: ‘Messaging is not enough. Designing the problem out of existence, in this case by manufacturing only cordless blinds, is the most effective strategy.’
She also quoted advice from the Australian Competition and Consumer (ACCC) Commission, which was published before it mandated stricter regulations in 2014.
A coroner’s court in Christchurch, New Zealand heard that when the father went to check on his son at about 4pm, he was not in his bed (stock image)
‘The ACCC does not believe that parental education alone sufficiently mitigates the hazard,’ it said.
Ms McKenzie said curtain cords should be treated with the same caution parents exercised around baths, swimming pools, the sea, lakes and rivers.
‘Window blind strangulation incidents can be fatal within minutes and can occur silently. In this regard, they are similar to child drownings,’ she said.
‘Accessible window blind cords should be considered as hazardous to young children as standing bodies of water.’