Horror for all parents: a small child dies in daycare – during the afternoon nap. The boy’s head was probably trapped in the bunk bed.
Gelsenkirchen – The two-year-old boy who perished on Monday in a Gelsenkirchen daycare center probably suffocated after being trapped in a bunk bed.
The autopsy result must show more details, said a Gelsenkirchen city spokesman on Tuesday. But the pose in which the boy was found confirms this suspicion.
Educators had found the boy lifeless on Monday after an afternoon nap in the facility. He had been reanimated but died shortly afterwards.
The boy had been lying down in the bunk bed during his afternoon nap and obviously pushed up the bottom plate of the bed above. Then his head was probably wedged between the bed frame and the bottom plate of the upper bed, said the city spokesman. The whole thing happened silently. The educators who were sitting in front of the relaxation room hadn’t heard anything.
The bunk beds are high-quality furniture specially offered for day-care centers. The city has similar beds in many daycare centers. All had been examined, the bottom plate of the upper bed was solid everywhere – only obviously not in the case of the unfortunate bed, said the spokesman. The bed is more than ten years old.
At the time of the accident, according to the city, there were four children and two teachers in the facility. Gelsenkirchen’s mayor Karin Welge (SPD) was “deeply shocked” on Monday about the accident. The mini-daycare center of the Gelsenkirchen day care center (“GeKita”) remained closed on Tuesday and will certainly not open for the whole week, said the city spokesman.
According to the city, a total of nine children under the age of three can be looked after by two day care workers in a mini-daycare center. Housing associations cooperate with the city and provide them with rooms for childcare free of charge. The rooms are then converted to make them suitable for children. The collaboration is a NRW model project that was implemented for the first time in Gelsenkirchen and has since been taken over by several municipalities. dpa
