SPANISH FORK, Utah, May 20, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — A 3-year-old girl was rushed to the hospital in critical condition after falling out of second-level window Sunday night.
Sgt. Chris Sheriff, with the Spanish Fork Police Department, told Gephardt Daily the little girl was apparently standing on a bed that was under the window when the “screen fell out and she fell with it.”
Sheriff said the child may have hit a concrete step on the porch below.
She suffered head trauma and was flown by Life Flight to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City in critical condition, he said.
“It was an accident,” Sheriff said, “and they happen way too often.”
In fact, accidents like this one are so common, numerous websites provide statistics on the number of children, usually younger than 5 years old, who fall from windows in the United States and Canada.
Most of these falls occur when the weather warms up, windows are opened, and young children are fascinated by the sights and sounds on the other side of the window screen.
According to a blog on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website, “An estimated 3,300 children ages five and younger, are treated each year in U.S. hospital emergency departments.”
The CPSC site offers these tips for keeping children safe:
- Install window guards and window stops—window stops go on the side of the window tracks to keep the window from opening more than 4 inches.
- Whenever possible, open windows from the top, NOT the bottom.
- Keep furniture away from windows to limit a child’s access.
- Don’t depend on screens to keep children from falling out. Screens keep bugs out; they won’t keep children in.
The Mayo Clinic website also has a list of ways to help keep children from falling out of windows, down stairs, and off of porches and balconies.
