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CASES & INVESTIGATIONS |
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GENERAL INFORMATION |
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| June 16, 2004 |
Good
Morning America, "One Wrong Move:
Car Window Switches Can Be Deadly for Children" |
Matthew
Chappell was serving in the Middle East with
the U.S. Air Force when he got the bad news.
His 4-year-old daughter was killed in an accident
involving a car.
But the May 24 accident
in Box Elder, S.D., had nothing to do with a collision. Instead, Hailee Chappell
was caught and killed in a power window.
"It happened so fast
and it's so silent that you don't know," said Jessica Chappell, the girl's
mother. She says she had left Hailee and her little sister, Madison, in the car
for just a few minutes and when she returned she thought Hailee was just playing.
"The next thing I
know I go outside and I see my daughter's hair blowing in the wind," Jessica
Chappell said. "She had rolled her head up in the window."
Theirs isn't the only
sad story. In March, 3-year-old Rian Brandt was killed in Delphi, Ind., by a
power window. In the last year, power windows have killed at least seven more
children, including a 3-year-old Dallas girl on June 6 and a 4-year-old Wisconsin
boy on June 2. The list goes on, and the details of each case are tragically
similar.
Since 1990, power windows
have killed at least 36 children, according to Kids and Cars, a nonprofit group
that tracks auto-safety issues involving children. A 1997 government study by
the National Center for Statistics and Analysis estimated power windows sent
nearly 500 people to emergency rooms in one year, and that half the victims were
small children.
Power windows are no longer
a luxury option. They are equipped in 80 percent of all cars sold today. But
certain power window designs have safety experts concerned they could pose a
life-threatening hazard for children. Car makers say children should never be
left alone in any vehicle, and certainly not one with the keys in the ignition. |
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