Children were inside the play structure at a baseball game when it was carried 15 to 20 feet in the air the by the wind. One child died and another was injured.
A 5-year-old boy was killed at a professional baseball game in Maryland on Friday after a bounce house was picked up by a wind gust while children were inside of it, the authorities said.
Children fell from the inflatable play structure when it was launched 15 to 20 feet in the air before landing on the baseball field at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf, Md., where the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs were playing Friday night, according to a statement from the government of Charles County, Md.
The 5-year-old boy, who has not been identified, was airlifted to Children’s National Hospital in Washington and later pronounced dead, according to Jennifer L. Harris, the press officer for Charles County, and the county’s news release. A second child was also airlifted to the same hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
The death took place while the Blue Crabs were playing against the York Revolution in an Atlantic League of Professional Baseball game in Waldorf, about 25 miles south of Washington. The teams then halted play, and the Blue Crabs postponed their games over the weekend.
“Our entire organization shares our condolences with the family mourning the loss of a child, and concern for the child who was injured,” Courtney Knichel, general manager of the Blue Crabs, said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with them all.”
The bounce house was on an elevated, fenced-off surface above right field, according to a report from WRC-TV, NBC’s Washington affiliate. After being lifted off the ground, it crashed on the field near the first-base line.
The bounce house is usually set up in an area for children to play in during games, Ms. Harris said in an email.
A spokesman for the Blue Crabs could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bounce houses have gone airborne and killed children before. This past April, a 2-year-old was killed and another child was injured in Arizona when the wind picked up the bounce house they were in and threw it into a neighboring lot. In 2021, five Australian children died after a bouncy castle was propelled 30 feet in the air during their school’s end-of-the-year celebration.
A study by the University of Georgia found at least 479 injuries and 28 deaths happened in wind-related bounce house incidents around the world between 2000 to 2021.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent federal regulatory agency, recommends that bounce houses should not be used when maximum wind speeds exceed 15 to 25 miles per hour.
The group advises that if “the tops of the trees are swaying” it may not be safe to use a bounce house. Bounce houses should be secured with at least six anchor points, according to the Amusement Devices Safety Council, Britain’s workplace health and safety regulator.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
