2-year-old South Florida girl dies after furniture falls over in bedroom, police say
POMPANO BEACH, Fla. – A 2-year-old girl in South Florida died Friday morning after a piece of bedroom furniture fell over, authorities said.
According to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to a medical emergency at a home in Pompano Beach, the Sun-Sentinel reported.
“An incident involving a piece of furniture led to a medical emergency for a child,” sheriff’s office spokesperson Carey Codd said. “The child was pronounced deceased.”
Authorities said the girl’s name was Hope Ford, the Sun-Sentinel reported.
Robert Aratari, 60, a neighbor of the family, said he was watching television at about 8 a.m. when he heard screaming coming from across the street.
“I heard the most godawful, guttural scream,” Aratari told the Sun-Sentinel. “You knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.”
The sheriff’s office did not release further details about the cause of the child’s death, the newspaper reported. Several adults were inside the home and were interviewed by detectives.
The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy to determine the official cause of the child’s death, Codd said.
“It’s just shocking to see a child playing one day and the next day you wake up to this,” Aratari told the Sun-Sentinel.
According to a U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission report issued in 2019, there were 459 deaths involving children age 17 and younger between 2000 and 2018 related to furniture, televisions and appliances tipping over, the newspaper reported. Children age 5 or younger accounted for 93% of those deaths.
