Deaths Of 2 Children Warn Of Danger In Hope Chests
The devastating deaths of two Franklin children in an
automatically locking hope chest Sunday night is a heartbreaking reminder of
how dangerous the prized heirlooms are — and how many remain in people’s homes
despite nearly 20 years of recall efforts — an Ohio couple whose daughter
suffocated inside one of the boxes said
“Nobody ever looks at it as being a death box. They just
don’t,” said Mark Massarella of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, whose daughter Natalie died
in a similar Lane chest in 1999. “The lid is very, very heavy, and when it
closes, it closes hard, and you can’t get out from the inside. It just can
happen so fast.”
Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey’s office said
the Franklin children, identified as Sean Munroe, 7, and Lexi Munroe, 8, were
trapped inside an “older” Lane chest at their family’s home on Chestnut Street
on Sunday night. Family members were home at the time, but a blaring TV may
have drowned out any of the children’s pleas for help, officials said.
Family members called 911 at about 8 p.m. and the children
were rushed in vain to hospitals in Norwood and Milford. Autopsies are set for today.
Their deaths mark at least the ninth that officials have
attributed to Lane’s hope chests since 1977.
The Lane Co., through the federal Consumer Product Safety
Commission, issued a voluntary recall in 1996 for an estimated 12 million
chests manufactured between 1912 and 1987, offering to replace the automatic
lock for free. Lane also agreed to pay a $900,000 civil penalty in 2001 for
failing to report the danger immediately, and the recall has been repeated at
least twice — once in 2000 and again in 2006.
A Consumer Product Safety Commission spokeswoman could not
say how many Lane chests still have the original locks, and company officials
did not respond to repeated interview requests yesterday.
Massarella and his wife, Mary, have waged a public campaign
to urge people to check and replace their locks; Mark Massarella estimated the
number of still-hazardous chests at 6 million.
“The odds are that it’s going to happen again and again,
because you’re just not going to get the word out to everybody,” Mark
Massarella said. “They last forever. They’re passed down from one generation to
the next. And if people don’t learn there’s a replacement lock available, they
just wouldn’t think of it.”
The Munroe family said they bought the chest in question at
least 12 years ago, Morrissey’s office said.
Mary Massarella said the chest that trapped her daughter had
belonged to her grandmother, and that the family never knew of the recall or
potential danger.
“We never would have had it,” she said. “My husband and I
were the most protective parents. We always knew where our kids were. The guilt
that we feel, and those
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