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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

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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