A young child who was found unresponsive at a home in a small coastal NSW town had been involved in a tragic accident involving his hooded jumper strangling him.
NSW police on Tuesday said the two-year-old’s death in Fingal Bay was not suspicious and appeared to be a ‘tragic misadventure’ in which the boy’s clothing tightened around his neck after catching on a curtain rod.
Emergency services responded to a distraught emergency call from the child’s mother at 12.10pm yesterday.
Police officers performed CPR on the child until paramedics and doctors from CareFlight arrived, however, the boy was pronounced dead at the scene.
Neighbours told the Daily Telegraph they could hear the mother’s distressed cries after she found her son.
They believed the boy had been playing cheerily just moments before the horror incident.
‘They’re the most beautiful family … we are all still traumatised by yesterday,’ one neighbour said.
‘All we know is she (the child’s mother) was only out of the room like for a minute and he’s jumped up I think and it’s gotten snagged on the (curtain) rod.’
Dozens of emergency crews attended a Fingal Bay home on Monday (pictured), but were unable to save a two-year-old boy who became unresponsive after his jumper caught on a curtain rail
Paramedics and doctors from CareFlight attended the scene in the Port Stephens area (above, a CareFlight helicopter landed at an oval nearby to the scene)
Police are preparing a report for the Coroner.
According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, at least two children die each year in Australia due to curtain and window blind-related accidents.
A mandatory safety standard for internal window coverings was introduced in July 2010, with further regulations on installation services coming into effect in January 2015.
The case echoes a similar tragedy in Port Stephens in 2013, when toddler Jack Mackay died after becoming entangled in a curtain cord while playing in his cot.
At the time, Jack’s parents, Clinton and Laura Mackay, advocated for mandatory safety measures in homes.
‘It was such an avoidable accident and we just think it is so easy to fix this problem so that no other family has to go through this pain that we are feeling,’ Ms Mackay told the Daily Telegraph at the time.
Neighbours reported hearing the heartbroken cries of the young boy’s mother after the accident (above, emergency vehicles line the suburban street)
