Alex Hook, a 6-year-old child from Kenosha, Wisconsin, left his RiverView Elementary school for recess on a Friday to play with his classmates. Tragically, catastrophe happened when the first-grader — who enjoys dinosaurs, trucks, boats, and hanging out with his brother Nathan — leaned down, not understanding the seemingly simple gesture would lead to calamity.
Alex was struck in the head in a tragic, unusual accident while bending over on the school playground. Had he been standing up, it may have been nothing more than a fractured leg, his godmother added. Sadly, due to Alex’s posture, his wounds were considerably more serious than a fractured bone when a piece of rebar shot out of nowhere and slammed into his skull with enormous force.
Somebody on the opposite side of the chain-link fence that enclosed the playground was mowing the grassy median on county land near the school and had run over the rebar, sending it soaring into the air from beneath the lawnmower.
Alex’s mother got a call from the school shortly after the event alerting her that Alex had been injured by a piece of metal. Nothing could have braced her for the state she’d find her son in when she raced to his side, despite the fact that she got to the school about the same time as first responders.
Alex was airlifted via Flight for Life to Children’s Wisconsin Hospital in Wauwatosa, where he had brain surgery. Unfortunately, physicians found that a fragment of Alex’s skull had been trapped in his brain. Due to swelling, the first-grader required half of his skull removed, rendering him unidentifiable to family members.
Alex was put in a medically induced coma for 72 hours after half of his skull was removed owing to brain enlargement in the belief that he would revive. Unfortunately, it’s a waiting game, Michelle said. 72 hours may not seem like much, but when one is sitting there seeing her nephew, her sister’s son, sit there with tubes going out of every pore of his body, it’s a lifetime. It’s really horrible.
To make matters harder, Alex’s 10-year-old brother Nathan has special needs. Although he was made aware of his younger brother’s accident, he had no idea how serious his brother’s situation was as Alex stayed in critical condition in the hospital, being continuously monitored in the hopes that he would heal after developing a fever during the struggle for his life.
According to Sgt. David Wright of the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department, although this was a terrible situation, it was declared an accident, and so KSD has no further participation with this issue. Although it was an accident, it could have been avoided.
In addition to being concerned about Alex’s recuperation, the family is naturally upset that somebody decided to mow a lawn near a playground when children were out for recess.
Alex’s family makes an excellent argument. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than 37,000 Americans are injured by power mowers each year, and such incidents are the primary cause of significant amputations in kids under the age of 10.
Enabling the Future claims that “each year, 800 kids alone are run over by riding mowers or small tractors, and more than 600 of those accidents end in amputation; 75 people are murdered, and 20,000 are wounded; one in five deaths includes a kid. Lawnmowers are the most prevalent source of serious limb loss in kids under the age of ten.
Furthermore, lawnmowers are not just dangerous to individuals who use them. They also endanger everyone around, thus basic safety standards suggest that one should keep their kids indoors and not let other kids play nearby while one is mowing. Hopefully, this serves as a lesson to both parents, schools, and public landscapers. Mowers and children do not mix, and a chain-link fence separating the two is insufficient to assure the safety of people around.
