Safety audit of escalators urged at inquest into death of child (2)

A recommendation that a safety audit be carried out on all escalators was made by a coroner's court jury yesterday.

The recommendation was added to a finding that a two-year-old child, Patrick Criotoru, had died from accidental death, following a fall from an escalator in Dunnes Stores, Blanchardstown, last Christmas.

The jury sitting in the Dublin Coroner's Court also recommended that a safety grid be installed on the escalator in Dunnes Stores, after it heard what the Coroner, Dr Brian Farrell, described as "hearsay evidence" that a similar accident involving a child at a supermarket in Tallaght resulted in a child sustaining a broken arm.

In the course of a statement read to the court yesterday, Mrs Lia Criotoru of Corduff Gardens, Blanchardstown, said she was shopping on the first floor of Dunnes Stores in the Blanchardstown Centre shortly after noon on December 30th last, when she called her two children, Patrick and his older sister Romana, to go home. She took Patrick by the hand but as she was leaving she paused briefly beside a clothes rail. She did not have a chance to examine the clothes, she said, before she saw her son Patrick balanced precariously on the left handrail of a downward moving escalator.

Patrick was lying with his tummy on the moving handrail, his hands out in front of him and his legs out behind. Mrs Criotoru heard the child's cry of alarm as he fell over, a drop of more than 16 feet.

She said she raced down the escalator to where her son had landed on a tiled floor in front of a cash machine, but was prevented by a man from going to him. She was offered a seat and water but her only concern was for Patrick.

A witness, Mr David Valentine, said he noticed Patrick "flicking his hand" at the moving handrail moments before he saw him a second time lying across the handrail as it moved away. "He fell before I could react," Mr Valentine said. He said "an older woman took the hand of the little girl" while about a minute later "the child's mother ran down the escalator".

A witness who was in an express check-out on the ground floor, Mr Karl French, said he heard a cry of alarm from a man's voice and "saw an object fall to my right". He said the child appeared to be unmarked and there was a pulse. He called for an ambulance.

Mr Stephen Corbally, the security manager of Dunnes Stores in Blanchardstown, said gardaí arrived within a short space of time and Patrick was removed to James Connolly Memorial Hospital, Blanchardstown, and later to Beaumont Hospital, where he died from cranial cerebral trauma on January 2nd.

Garda Shane Curran told the court he had examined the escalator and found it to be in working order. Garda Curran said he was of the opinion that if Patrick did not climb up on the moving handrail, then he could have been drawn up by it.

Returning a verdict of accidental death, the jury called for "the current layout at the top of all escalators to be addressed by a suitably qualified person".