Live Oak, FL – Autopsies showed three young children died of accidental asphyxiation when they became trapped in an unplugged chest-style freezer in their yard in north Florida.
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Suwannee County Sheriff Sam St. John said there were no signs of trauma on the children, ages 1, 4 and 6. Their bodies were found Sunday at a home outside of Live Oak after they went missing while playing outside.
The Gainesville Sun reports two families lived at the home — a woman and her 4-year-old daughter, and the grandmother of the other two children.
St. John said the mother went inside while the children were playing on a trampoline. When she returned, they were gone. The children weren’t breathing when they were found inside the freezer, which had a latch keeping them from opening it.
I will not read the story. I am sorry I read the headline.
How terrible!
How can a 1 year old and a 4 year play outside unsupervised? That trampoline doesn’t look so safe either, there’s no safety netting around it. Sounds like a case of neglect to me. But, I do feel sorry for the mother and grandmother. It is a tragedy.
So awful. This used to happen occasionally, especially when people put out an old refrigerator for garbage pick-up. Children playing in the street would hide in there.
As a response, there are now codes that now that prohibit all refrigerators from being having outside latches that can’t be opened from the inside. They should do the same with freezers.
Criticism of the parents is unwarranted. Children get into mischief all the time, even with parents nearby.
Since the early 1960′ s, manufacturers of refrigerators and freezers have been required by law, NOT to have latches on the doors of such devices, in order to close them, as there were similar accidents in the past of young children becoming trapped in refrigerators. Hence, all should notice that their home refrigeration devices have a magnetic strip which will close, and which will open, if pressed upon from the inside. I don’t know when the freezer in this horrible tragedy was manufactured. However, any refrigeration device with a latch, whether a freezer or refrigerator, should be discarded, with the latch disabled.
I feel horrible that this avoidable accident occurred.
Can we lock hashitmer in?