WARNING: This story may be distressing to some readers<\/b><\/p>\n
A 9-month-old baby on an outing to visit her grandparents died after becoming caught in the harness of her car seat while drinking a bottle of milk.<\/p>\n
Coroner Janet Anderson<\/a>\u00a0said the \u201ctragic death\u201d was a sad reminder of the dangers of leaving young children unsupervised in\u00a0child restraints<\/a>\u00a0– even for short periods.<\/p>\n \u201cBabies and children should never be left unattended while buckled into safety restraints, even for short periods of time. Asphyxiation can occur very quickly, with devastating consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n In a recently released decision, the coroner said the baby girl, a twin who was born in November 2019, was much loved and cared for.<\/p>\n In August 2020, her parents took the girls and their other siblings to visit their grandparents.<\/p>\n The adults took their two young sons and one of the twins inside but left the other buckled in her car seat inside their van so she could finish drinking a bottle of formula.<\/p>\n They left the van\u2019s sliding door open so they could see her from the house. They also checked on her several times as she finished her bottle, leaning back in the seat.<\/p>\n But when the father went to collect her about 10 minutes later, he found her leaning forward and her lips were purple.<\/p>\n Efforts were made to revive the baby and she was rushed to\u00a0Rotorua Hospital<\/a>\u00a0before being transferred to\u00a0Auckland\u2019s Starship<\/a>\u00a0children\u2019s hospital, where tests showed she had severe brain damage. She died four days later having never regained consciousness.<\/p>\n Coroner Anderson found that at some time between her parents\u2019 checks, the baby girl became caught in either the straps or buckle of her car seat harness.<\/p>\n The car seat wasn\u2019t strapped into the van, and while the chest harness was secured, the crotch strap was left unbuckled, and the straps had been left loose.<\/p>\n This meant the baby was able to move around and potentially slide downwards, impeding her breathing. Due to a lack of oxygen, the coroner said she suffered severe and irreversible brain damage within a short period.<\/p>\n The coroner said the case was a reminder that babies and children should never be left unattended while buckled into safety restraints, even for short periods of time.<\/p>\n NZ HERALD<\/p>\n WARNING: This story may be distressing to some readers A 9-month-old baby on an outing to visit her grandparents died after becoming caught in the harness of her car seat while drinking a bottle of milk. Coroner Janet Anderson\u00a0said the \u201ctragic death\u201d was a sad reminder of the dangers of leaving young children unsupervised in\u00a0child […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10424,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10422\/revisions\/10424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}