Is it really that hard to keep two year olds from leaving the house and being run over?
Toddler survives being run over by van four times
Associated Press
Published March 19, 2003 TODD20
GERMANTOWN, Wis. -- A mother ran over her 2-year-old son four times while backing the family van out of the driveway, but the toddler miraculously survived.
Dianne Anthony rode over her son Matthew's chest and legs repeatedly Tuesday with the 4,600-pound van, thinking that a landscape timber near her front lawn was blocking her way, Germantown Police Lt. Peter Hoell said.
``God is watching over this little kid,'' Anthony said. ``It's a miracle. His head is fine, and they don't know if they have to do surgery or not.''
The child was receiving treatment for a broken thigh and liver damage at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Anthony said.
The boy was crying and had good vital signs when rescuers arrived around 12:10 p.m. at the family's home in suburban Milwaukee, Hoell said.
``It just makes the hair stick up on the back of my neck. I just can't imagine what she's feeling,'' Hoell said of the mother. ``It must be horrific.''
Anthony thought she was hitting the timber because she had struck it on previous occasions, Hoell said.
``She assumed she hit the landscape timber, so she pulled forward and she backed up again,'' he said. ``Unfortunately, it wasn't a landscape timber, it was her 2-year-old child. With the backward and forward motions, she struck him four times.''
Anthony's father, Kenneth Hess, said he was watching his daughter's three young boys while she went to the van to prepare to drive another son to school.
Hess had Matthew on his lap, but the boy got off and walked outside with his brother, he said.
Child safety expert Janette Fennell called the accident predictable but preventable. She said at least 58 children died after similar accidents last year.
``This is truly an epidemic,'' she said.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1451/3766225.html
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