Morbid details have emerged in the story of the British toddler who was crushed by a “falling screen” last Monday in a Shanghai restaurant.
The accident happened at Kervan Orient Express just after 8 pm when the three-year-old boy, playing with a seven-year-old girl, fell down and “touched the partition screen, which fell and hit him in the head,” according to Shanghai Daily.
The partition is taller than an adult, about 2 meters long, made of glass and wood and “quite heavy,” according to a waiter who declined to be named.
The restaurant manager, Sun Ying, reportedly called an ambulance at 8:10, but decided to hail a taxi because “they feared an ambulance would take too long.” The “they” presumably includes the restaurant owner and the boy’s mother, who, along with Sun, accompanied the injured boy to the nearest hospital. It’s unknown how long they waited for this ambulance that Sun reportedly called.
The first hospital said it could not treat the boy’s injuries, so he was rushed via private car to a second hospital, which also lacked the proper equipment. In what can only be described as a nightmare scenario, at 9 pm — 50 minutes after the first ambulance was called — the boy was “declared dead after waiting for an ambulance that never came.”
That last phrase, again, is via Shanghai Daily, citing “the restaurant staff who accompanied the boy and his mother.”
It’s unclear if the second ambulance they called, from the second hospital, ever arrived, even after the boy was pronounced dead.
British boy injured at eatery died waiting as ambulance never came (Shanghai Daily)
how tragic
the boy’s parents must be bereft