Articles Posted in Injuries to Minors

All too often I use this blog to write about Oregon auto accidents and Portland pedestrian accidents involving drunk driving. It is useful, however, to be reminded now and then that the most tragic accidents – those involving injured Oregon children – do not necessarily involve impaired drivers.

From Coos Bay comes word of an accident in which a “woman and her young daughter were badly injured when they were struck by a truck while crossing Newmark Avenue” according to the Coos Bay World. The accident is notable for the fact that, according to the paper, the driver, who was uninjured in the Oregon car accident, “was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, according to a police (news) release,” the paper reports.

The victims in this instance were a 28-year-old woman and her 7-year-old daughter. Both were badly injured and were transferred to Portland where they were admitted Oregon Health Sciences University hospital.

In the annals of serious and potentially serious injuries to children this one is as strange as it is frightening. According to the Associated Press, as reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, an 11-year old boy was recently injured at an Indiana amusement park when he “was bitten on the hand by an alligator.”

But wait: it gets stranger. The alligator bit the boy after another guest at the park, using a noose, lifted it out of its pen “and told children they could pet it.” When the animal began biting the man dropped it and ran away, reportedly hopping into a pickup truck along with a woman and four kids, even as he left other children alone with the now-loose animal.

From the standpoint of an Oregon personal injury lawyer with a special interest in injuries to children, where does one begin? Even allowing that the man was breaking the rules by picking up the alligator (not mentioned in the article, but it seems like a fairly safe assumption), what sort of zoo or animal park places potentially dangerous animals – like alligators – in a position where patrons can pick them up in the first place? Granted that someone was able to pick up a gator, one must then ask some tough questions about park security.

There are some obvious elements to boating safety – ones we are all aware of: wearing life jackets, for example. But a recent Oregon boating accident at Triangle Lake, which left one child severely injured enough to require evacuation by helicopter, is a reminder that there is much more to a safe summer by the water than life vests.

According to television station KVAL a girl was injured last week when she and “a group of kids on a church outing from the Salem area were being towed behind a 20-foot boat.” The girl “fell off the toy they were being towed on” and later complained of “back and leg pain.” Once at the hospital it was reported that the girl’s injuries are not life-threatening.

It is noteworthy that, according to KVAL, all of the children involved were wearing life jackets. The fact, however, that this precaution still left at least one child open to a potentially serious injury is a sad reminder of the extra precautions we must all take involving boating safety in general and children in particular.

Family and neighbors in Northwest Portland are breathing sighs of relief after a six-year-old boy survived a fall from a second story window without serious injury, according to television station KGW.

It goes without saying that an accident like this could have led to a far more serious Oregon child injury, and will have to serve as a wake-up call for both family members and for many people concerned with kids’ safety. As KGW notes, many parents can easily forget that screens are designed to keep bugs out but are not strong enough to stop even a small child from falling through them.

Teaching children the importance of safety around windows is as crucial as teaching them the dangers of electrical sockets. The link below to the Campaign to Stop Window Falls contains a number of simple safety tips. Many of these amount to basic common sense, such as the group’s admonition to “only allow windows to open 4 inches” by inserting a window stop or similar device into the window track, and a reminder to keep windows locked when they are closed.