A toddler sustained serious injuries when he became trapped between a bunk bed and a wall at a home on Milwaukee's northwest side.
According to Milwaukee Police it happened just before 11:00 a.m. Wednesday at a home near 101st and Mill Avenue. Police say the 2-year-old boy became wedged in-between a top bunk bed frame and a wall.
"My sister called the paramedics right away," said Deangleo Rainey, the toddler's uncle. "I guess he got his head stuck between the bunk bed. I want to say it stopped some type of circulation to his head."
Rainey says his nephew is in a coma at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, but doing better. The child's mother was at the hospital with her son Thursday.
"She's holding up pretty well," said Rainey. "Actually I talked to her not that long ago. She's real sad though, I mean anybody would, it's their baby."
Rainey said his nephew wasn't supposed to be on the top bunk when the accident happened.
According to the organization Safe Kids, it's recommended that children under 6-years-old stay off the top bunk. And older children should only use the top bunk for sleeping.
"We need to make sure that the mattress is fitted to the bunk bed," said Lisa Klindt Simpson, coordinator for Safe Kids Southeast Wisconsin. "So the bunk bed is going to have some standards on what size mattress to use, you want the correctly fitted mattress for safety reasons and bunk beds are required to have railings so as a child sleeps, they can't accidentally roll out of the bed."
In 1999, the Consumer Product Safety Commission came out with new mandatory bunk bed standards after almost 60 children died due to suffocation between the years 1990 and 1999.
A study released in 2008 showed that on average, more than 35,000 children and adolescents receive bunk bed related injuries each year, with falls being the most common.
Safe Kids also recommends not using any type of bed as a place to set children down while parents or caregivers do something else as they can easily fall off.
"You always want to make sure that your child is in your view and if you do need to step away or walk away from them, especially if they're a small baby or toddler, leave a hand on them so they can't fall off," said Klindt Simpson. "Whether it's a bed, a couch, a chair or anything like that."
