'As A Parent, It Scared Me To Death'

'As A Parent, It Scared Me To Death'

By Leslie Knopp

AUBURN - Little 15-month-old Kyle Grubb doesn't look like he's been through the scare of his life.

His father does.

"I haven't been going to church lately, but it makes you want to go back," said Marc Grubb.

Kyle fell out his family's apartment window, three stories down.

"As a parent it scared me to death," Marc added.

There are window locks on every other window in the Auburn apartment, but a relative staying in one bedroom took the lock off to get some air.

Monday, Kyle climbed up and pushed right through the window screen. The relative watching the family's five kids says she was distracted for just a moment and Kyle fell out.

Marc said, "The babysitter turned and heard a popping and Kyle wasn't here."

Marc thinks it was a miracle that Kyle fell onto a little bush. He says it's also a miracle Kyle missed a metal pipe sticking up out of the ground and a concrete slab.

"A few feet the other way and we wouldn't be bringing him home today," said Marc.

"This child was incredibly lucky," said Chris Martin, administrator of Harborview's Emergency Department. Martin says during the summer, the hospital treats a couple kids every month who fall out of windows.

She suggests that maybe Kyle survived because he was a baby and didn't get scared and rigid.

"Part of it is where he fell and the way he fell, and you could probably look at 15 months old that have done it in other parts of the country that would have been dead," said Martin.

Here are some tips from Harborview Medical Center to protect children from falls through open windows:

  • Parents should never depend on screens to keep children from falling out of windows. Screens are designed to pop out for fire safety.
  • Double-hung windows should be opened from the top, not the bottom.
  • Parents should keep beds, cribs and other furniture away from windows to prevent children from climbing onto the sill.
  • Families can install commercially available window guards to effectively prevent children from falling out of windows.
  • Inexpensive window stops can be installed on sliding windows to prevent them from opening more than four inches.

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