3 year old girl dies from fall in Anaheim...

[Disneyland1084]

At the Embassy Suites. This happened last night. My uncle was a guest. He heard a loud bang, then screaming. He went to see what was going on and saw the girl's body. He called my mom this morning in tears. It's a heart breaking story.

http://m.ocregister.com/articles/anaheim-672449-police-girl.html

 

[EMom]

I'm one of those people whose minds go to the worst case scenario without fail. Embassy Suites have always worried me, because of the way you walk around the interior and can see (and obviously fall into) the atrium below. A child who is a climber could scramble up the railing quickly and be over the edge in no time. My mind went to suicides also. It is a nice layout, but there is potential danger in it. What a terrible thing for this family.

 

[Bluestars]

That's horrible.

 

[DisneyPrince1982]

It sounds like the little girl was hanging from the railing, the mom came out and saw her and screamed, and then the little girl got scared and fell. Unreal.

 

[Mizzoufan]

OMG Her poor parents. How do you ever get over that?

 

[sailorstitch]

How sad. Does anybody have a picture of the walkways they use? I've never stayed there.

sailorstitch

 

[bcla]

How sad. Does anybody have a picture of the walkways they use? I've never stayed there.

sailorstitch

It's an atrium.

 

[dinolounger]

This is so sad. I can't tell conclusively from the photo, but wonder if the space between the vertical bars on the railings were just large enough for the child (who may have been small for her age) to squeeze through. If so, could explain how she got the exterior side of the railing, although short of witnesses still leaves open the question what would have prompted her to do that.

UPDATE: news report below says investigators say she either climbed over the railing or squeezed through it.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/girl-672535-old-death.html

View of railing from inside the hotel, taken by local paper. I can tell you -- given we recently replaced the railing on our deck at home -- that the spaces between the bars on the railing in that hotel would not almost certainly not pass code where I live. They look to be at least four inches, code here is 3 inches max.

 

[dinolounger]

Here is the victim, Stephanie Martinez. Her family is from Las Vegas. It is gut wrenching to know this photo was likely taken during the stay at the hotel.

 

[DisneyPrince1982]

What's the over/under before the family files a lawsuit against Embassy?

 

[MickeySP]

The poor family

 

[firecracker725]

The family has set up a go fund me account and raised $17K for the little girl's funeral.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

I would be really nervous with small kids in a hotel like that. They would have to walk next to the railings every time they left or entered the room. It's not like you could easily keep them out of the area with those railings because they're everywhere. I stayed in a similar hotel once where the railings were solid wood and quite high. They had wide, flat boards across the top that were angled, so it would have been difficult for a child to grab on and pull themselves up. I read this story last night and looked at the hotel in question on TripAdvisor because I was curious about the layout. They don't get great reviews as it is. I wonder how or if the hotel will address the issue with the railings.

 

[Kitty 34]

How sad.

 

[Andtototoo]

That poor family.

There is a Marriott here that we've used for events and I never liked it for youth events because it is set up like that -- with balconies encircling an atrium many floors down. I was always worried some stupid kid would take a dare from someone to climb on the railing and fall to their death into the atrium. It was not an unfounded fear as one year I got a call from the manager on duty that a group of kids had somehow climbed out onto the roof and were throwing crap down into the parking lot. Best part? It was a church youth group.

 

[mmouse37]

It is a tragedy and heartbreaking and could not imagine what the parents must be feeling right now but do not think it is the totally the hotel's fault. We were just in Copenhagen and I was shocked that on a multi-story hotel the outside windows actually opened with no screens. That would not fly here but maybe people take personal responsibility to a different degree over there.

We often say we are being smothered with so many protections thrown on us. In general I think it would be very hard to have hotels and businesses and national parks/zoos/attractions foresee every single harm that may come our way. We as humans have to be diligent and use our own common sense more than we do.

MJ

 

[bcla]

A relatively low railing isn't really all that unusual. It's pretty common at many indoor and outdoor shopping malls. However, I think they tend to be higher and are typically glass. Just recently I was somewhere with my kid, who stuck a hand through a railing next to some stairs. My kid didn't try to climb the rail, and in any case the spacing between the rail was adequate to keep a kid from falling through. I thought that perhaps this Anaheim incident was like the Golden Gate Bridge case where a kid slipped through a 9-inch crack between the railing and the walkway. They've tightened it up with cables pulled taught.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/PAGE-ONE-Girl-2-Dies-In-Fall-From-Gate-2788651.php

However, that's nothing compared to some of the stuff I've seen overseas. I've visited China and had an emergency stay in a budget hotel. They had no elevators, and the staircase had gaps where an adult could fall through. The design was basically something that wouldn't meet any building code in the US, or perhaps someone got bribed to ignore an obvious hazard.

I've actually taken my child to places where there were obvious risks of falling. However, there's an absolute fear that something could go wrong, so parents are always hyper-vigilant of where a child is.

 

[sailorstitch]

It's an atrium.

Thank you. I'm a very visual person so I need to see pictures of these things. Plus I haven't seen a hotel with this kind of set up in ages. Like probably not since the '90s. Granted I don't stay in many hotels.... We had one like this in town here. It was originally a Holiday Inn so I wasn't as tall. It got run down (not up to code, invested with bed bugs!), the owners skipped town, it sat vacant for years, then was demolished. The hotel I staid at last month was a little like this, but backwards. Each room had a picture window that looked out into the atrium/lobby. Then the walkways were normal, indoor hotel hallways. Much safer that way! This set up just looks like on big liability issue.

Here is the victim, Stephanie Martinez. Her family is from Las Vegas. It is gut wrenching to know this photo was likely taken during the stay at the hotel.

What a cutie! I hope that at least this tragedy occurred after their trip to Disneyland. Because then the parents would at least have those happy memories.

sailorstitch

 

[Bluestars]

When my kids were little, balconies made me very nervous. My boys were climbers, so I couldn't take my eyes off of them around a balcony. One time at home, I turned around and my toddler was standing on the dining room table. Another time he was playing in the backyard and was climbing the fence around the pool.

They really should put some plexiglass or netting of some type to prevent a child from slipping through the bars, if that's what happened.

 

[pigletgirl]

That is just so horribly sad. Makes me nervous though!