A four-year-old girl suffocated while playing in a bouncy castle at an amusement park while the staff were allegedly staring at their smartphones.
The girl, identified as Valeria, was visiting the park in Mykolaiv, Ukraine with her mother, Anna, when the tragic accident occurred on Saturday, May 13. It is reported that Valeria got tangled up in the ropes attached to the bouncy castle, inadvertently hanging herself. Anna started to get worried when she couldn’t hear her daughter’s laughter and approached the park staff to check on Valeria’s well-being.
Local media reports allege that the three staff members responsible for supervising the children were preoccupied with their phones at the time of the incident. After discovering Valeria’s lifeless body, her mother sought help from the staff, who reportedly fled the scene.
Natalia Kuchynska, a close family friend, revealed that at first, Anna believed her daughter had fainted from the heat and tried to revive her.
However, the situation quickly escalated. Witnesses at the park called for emergency medical assistance, while others desperately tried to resuscitate Valeria by splashing water on her and performing CPR.
According to Kuchynska, no medical professionals were present at the scene to provide immediate assistance so someone rushed to a nearby clinic to get dentists to examine the child and try to revive her using ammonia and light. However, all their efforts were in vain and paramedics declared Valeria dead on their arrival.
Valeria’s funeral took place on Wednesday, May 17, causing immense grief and heartbreak for her mother, said Kuchynska.
Sergiy Shaikhet, the chief of police for the Mykolaiv Oblast region, said that preliminary findings attribute Valeria’s death to suffocation resulting from entanglement in the loops on the bouncy castle’s wall.
Authorities have detained the 45-year-old owner of the bouncy castle as part of an ongoing investigation. If found guilty, she could face a maximum sentence of eight years.
