Sometimes we become distracted when we have the entire world in our hands. That was reportedly the case in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, last week when a child died playing in a bounce house. Amusement park employees were allegedly looking at their phones when a 4-year-old named Valeria accidentally hanged herself in a bounce castle.
The girl's mother, Anna, reportedly asked park staff to check on her child, who was discovered dead. The scene devastated the family, and according to the U.S. Sun, a close family friend is speaking out about the tragedy that no one saw coming.
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The bounce castle looked like a fun place to play.
Natalia Kuchynska, a family friend, told the U.S Sun that Valeria and Anna were visiting the park in Mykolaiv, when Valeria wanted to jump in the bounce house. After park employees reportedly found the child hanging, Kuchynska said the mother didn't understand what had happened to her young daughter. She said Anna thought Valeria "lost consciousness while playing in the heat" and desperately tried waking her child.
Park staff reportedly left the scene.
Kuchynska said once the amusement park employees saw Valeria's body, they quickly left the park, leaving the child's poor mother devastated. A witness called an ambulance and began CPR on Valeria, but he was unsuccessful. The little girl died before emergency personnel arrived, the family friend told the U.S. Sun.
"They examined the child, tried to wake her up with ammonia, and shone a light into her eyes. When the ambulance arrived, paramedics pronounced Valeria dead," according to LBC.
Police arrested the bounce castle's owner.
Police have detained the 45-year-old owner of the bounce house, the U.S. Sun reported.
An investigation is ongoing. If she is found guilty, she could face up to eight years in prison, the news outlet reported.
The child died of suffocation.
Sergiy Shaikhet, chief of police for the Mykolaiv Oblast region, said, "It was preliminarily established that a 4-year-old girl got entangled in the loops on the wall of a bounce castle while playing on it. According to preliminary findings by experts, the child died as a result of suffocation," according to the U.S. Sun.
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Children are hurt in accidents related to bounce houses each year.
In August 2022, Today reported results from a study by the American Meteorological Society that may give parents pause about allowing their children to play in bounce houses.
The report said there have been a staggering 479 bounce-house-related injuries since 2000 and 28 deaths. Some of the incidents are wind-related, and in those accidents, children often suffered head and neck injuries, according to John Knox, the study's lead author and a geography professor at the University of Georgia, per Today.
Knox told the news outlet that roughly 10,000 emergency room visits each year are due to bounce-house-related injuries.
"More than one out of every four injuries was a broken bone," Dr. Gary Smith, author of the 2021 study and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, told Today. "(Bounce castle) injuries happen more frequently than most people realize."
