A six year old boy playing on an inflatable  obstacle at the Lakewood Elementary school carnival became trapped in between two pieces of the course and nearly suffocated. The boy was rescued when a couple of kids saw the boy and notified an employee of the company that supplied the play equipment.  After being pulled free, they noticed the boy wasn’t breathing.  Officials from the Clay County Sheriff’s department, who were on hand running a child ID booth performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the boy.  When emergency crews arrived, the boy was breathing on his own.

On the way to the hospital, however, his condition got worse and he needed to be ventilated by the time he arrived at Children’s Mercy Hospital.  The mother of the boy, who is in kindergarten at Lakewood, said she had already warned some kids earlier for playing on the equipment improperly.  The boy’s condition had improved on Friday but was still in the hospital.

This is every parents worse nightmare. You can protect your kids from everything but then its something as harmless as a carnival play-thing that can represent a greater danger and cause serious child injury.  Fun Services of Kansas City maintains that they’ve always taken the proper precautions when setting up equipment, and released a statement through their marketing department saying in 35 years they’d never had a situation where a child became trapped and couldn’t breathe.  Sometimes, these situations can come out of nowhere.  You can’t blame kids who are usually so excited to be running around in a bounce house that the last thing in their mind is any possible danger.

Always be sure to properly install, inspect and maintain play equipment.  Having someone on sight that is certified in CPR can also be the difference in life and death in a situation like this.

The Kansas City Child Injury Attorneys of the Roswold Law Group in Kansas City wish a quick recovery for the poor kid involved in this accident and hope in the future we all keep an eye on the little ones.