So, terrible way to die, but I don’t understand how this could have happened. The article speculates about the seats maybe tilting forward due to a recall issue, but I still don’t see how that could trap and kill an able bodied near adult.
While googling “Kyle Plush”, I had a ad come up. “These new crossover SUVs will take your breath away.”
Jesus.
From another article on that site:
So it sounds like he was pinned upside down and did not have the leverage to get out, perhaps with his legs over the seat.
I had one of those vans. The entire back row bench is designed to fold up (the upright section against the seating section), then pivot into the storage well in the floor behind it. When you set it back up, the seating section has hooks that are supposed to lock into corresponding bars in the floor. The problem is that lots of time they don’t lock, so the seat looks like it’s OK, but you could easily push the whole thing back into the well, without folding the upright section back first. If he was kneeling on the seat, and reaching behind it to get stuff in the well, his upper body could have gotten trapped in the well, with the entire weight of the seat (a lot) holding him down. He wouldn’t have had any leverage to push the seat away from him and get out, especially if his legs were pinned against the back hatch of the van.
ETA: Here’s a video 2007 Honda Odyssey -How to fold down the third row seats. - YouTube showing how to fold down the back seats. If he was leaning over the back of the larger seat, and it folded forward unexpectedly, I can definitely see how he could get trapped.
nm
Thanks for the video link. From watching that, I’m assuming the seatbacks were upright when he leaned over them. If he had his chest laying over the top of the seatback when the whole assembly pivoted rearward, his rib cage would have been pinned against the rear hatch, with his own body weight pushing the whole thing downward. With the angle of movement relative to the rear hatch, a given amount of weight would have resulted in a substantially larger compressive force on his rib cage. He might have been able to use his arms to push away from the floor and temporarily relieve the pressure on his ribs, but not enough to free himself. A miserable way to die. 
7 minutes go by before the 911 dispatcher contacts the Police??! God damn it!
Vaguely like the crucifixion of St. Peter. That poor kid. How terrifying.
I was seeing South Park merchandise.
That makes more sense. I heard about this, and was trying to figure out how that could happen, but if his own weight is also contributing to the weight pinning him, I can see that being hard to get out of.
I wonder how many times this has happened that had a more fortunate ending that didn’t make the news.
Not just a miserable way to die, a very slow way too.
Yup. Can’t breathe, so you push off with your arms. Arms get tired, you have to relax them, ribs get squeezed and then can’t breathe. Arms recover a bit, you push off and breathe some more. Eventually your arms are too whipped to push off anymore, your ribs get squeezed, you can’t breathe and you’re powerless to stop it. :eek:
Update. (Still dead.)
This was exactly the type of emergency 911 was supposed to respond too.
The victim gave them pretty good information about the car and location.
It appears 911 didn’t forward enough information to the first responders.
What a senseless and preventable way to die.
If the 911 operator dropped the ball on this, she needs to be charged with something.
It could have been a technology failure, but it really seems like she just didn’t take the call seriously, and just walked away from it, using the excuse of what she considered a prank call to take a break. Complete speculation on my part for that last bit, but from the article, it doesn’t seem that improbable.
Is there confirmation that this 911 system wasn’t an E-911 with cell phone autolocation capability? The kid was calling from a cell phone. Any 911 technology from this millennium would have been able to triangulate quickly to within a few dozen yards.
This should not have been a laborious search that the police felt free to give up on. A gold minivan. How stealthy is that?
It’s my understanding that even if it was a prank call, they would still send officers out there. I don’t think the operator is allowed to not send officers out to a prank call. It’s not up to them to make that decision.
If everything is taken at face value or even if the details are a little wrong, ISTM, the officers simply couldn’t find him fast enough.
I can understand that it may be difficult to find a car, in a parking lot at or near a school, while school is letting out. On top of that, it sounds like during the first time the officers went out, they didn’t know exactly what they were looking for. To top it all off, he was, I assume, below the window line way in the back. Even in the middle of the day, it’s going to mean going up to every car and directly looking into it. I’d assume the van had tinted rear windows as well.
I’m sure someone will be blamed for this and it sounds like it’s going to be one or both of the 911 operators. Even if they did do something wrong, I’m still willing to bet, that if everything played out the way it did, but he called 911 a little earlier or survived a little longer, the facts would be very different.
Similarly, I’d be willing to bet that if everything played out exactly as it did, but the officers found him on time, everyone involved would be a hero.
I agree, but have you ever driven around in a high school parking lot at 3-3:30. There’s a lot of cars moving around. One article I read mentioned that the school actually hired an extra officer just to direct traffic at the end of the day, due to the amount of cars trying to leave the school.
However, that’s probably also due to the amount of those cars being driven my kids with very little experience. I drive through a high school area twice in the morning and twice around 3. There’s a lot of kids, many of which are clearly still learning how to drive.
According to the article that I posted today, after the first call a police officer looked around for 11 minutes and didn’t find anything. It wasn’t until the second call (which the 911 operator claims to have not understood but apparently the recording was clear) that he described it as a gold minivan. Which the operator didn’t pass along.
There is the possibility that the first cop did see the minivan, but it looked empty. After all, if someone claimed to be stuck under the seat of their car, wouldn’t you have been envisioning someone clearly visible, feet dangling out of an open door? Not someone folded away under a collapsible back seat?
I’ve raised and lowered folding car seats many times. They aren’t difficult for even a small person to manage.
It’s hard to understand how this accident occurred and why the kid got more than a bump on the head.
They reported obvious signs of struggle and he kept himself from suffocating for awhile.
I guess freak accidents will always happen. Hopefully the manufacturer can find a way to keep their car seats from killing anyone else.
See link in post #11. Click on animation at top of page to see what investigators thing happened. This matches pretty well with what I described verbally in post #6.
I don’t see an animation on that page.