West Jordan Family Warns Of Dangers Of Window Blind Cords After 3-Year-Old Gets Tangled
Jan 29, 2019, 11:54 PM | Updated: 11:55 pm
WEST JORDAN, Utah – It was a loud thump coming from the children’s bedroom that alerted her to an unthinkable accident. Arika Hernandez said her 3-year-old son, Kai, had tangled in rotating window blind cords in early January.
“I literally could have walked into that room to my son no longer living,” she said.
Her son was lying on the floor with deep, red wounds around his neck where the cords tightened.
She said Kai was climbing his bunk bed when the accident happened.
“He had wrapped the cords around his neck to make a necklace, but they tightened,” she said. “He tried to scream for us, but later told us that nothing came out.”
Eventually a fall from the top of the bunk’s ladder snapped the cord and freed Kai.
“When I jumped, it got down from my neck.” Kai said.
His family rushed him to the hospital where doctors ran scans to check his spine. Luckily, Kai only suffered wounds to his skin and would recover.
This incident is not uncommon. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said one child dies each month by strangling in a window covering cord.
In 2016, former BYU football star and running back’s coach tragically lost his 3-year-old, Elsie Mahe, to the same accident. The Hernandez family said they saw that story and even took precautions before their incident.
“The long part I was like, ‘yeah, absolutely that is so dangerous, it hangs down low,’ so I had it tied up but the safety tassel part of it I had no intentions of doing anything,” father Dan Hernandez said.
After posting their experience to Facebook, the family has been in touch with others who have experienced something similar.
“So many mothers reached out, with tragic endings to their stories,” Arika Hernandez said. “I don’t know if I could handle that trial of losing a child.”
The family wants others to learn from their experience and consider changing out their window treatments.
“This is an accident that should never happen,” Arika said. “This has been happening for years and the window blind companies need to take these off the shelves. It’s like if there were a car recall because of a death, that company would stop making the car. They should do the same for these blinds.”
