Power window rolls up on and kills girl playing in parked car in Arizona

[left-of-center2012]

A young girl died Saturday evening when the power window of the parked car she was playing in activated and closed on her, police in Phoenix said. Police responding to a 7:30 p.m. traffic accident call found a girl who had been playing inside a parked car outside a home and gotten caught in a closing power window, the Arizona Republic reported. Cops took her to a hospital in critical condition, where she later died of her injuries, The Associated Press reported.

Police did not say what part of the child’s body was caught in the window, or reveal her name or age. While no foul play is suspected, negligence charges may “be on the table,” police told KPNX-TV. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner will determine the child’s exact cause of death, police said.

While more children die in hot cars than in power-window accidents, the threat posed by the latter is also grave, car-safety advocates said. Children climbing windows can stand on and activate the toggle switches in some vehicle models. More than 65 children have been killed in the past 20 years, and an “untold number” have suffered amputations or brain injuries. “People don’t understand the power that these window go up,” Janette Fennell, president of national car safety advocacy organization Kids and Cars, said. “It has between 30 and 40 pounds of force, and it takes 22 pounds of force to break the trachea.”

“It’s awful. It’s heart-wrenching,” Andy Williams Phoenix Police Department spokesman Andy Williams told KSAZ-TV. “Little kids can get into anything, and it just takes a moment for them to get into something that they shouldn’t, and it just takes that moment where tragedy can strike..”

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-power-window-killed-girl-playing-parked-car-arizona-20211004-4xohxlaqhreu7cawljyto22voq-story.html