Car's electric window fatally choked boy (3)

A three-year-old boy died after his neck became trapped in an electric window of a car which did not have an automatic-reverse safety feature, the Dublin city coroner's court has heard.

Isac Cirpaci, an Irish-born child of Romanian parents, Christian and Marean, had been playing alone in his family's 1992 Volkswagen Passat outside their house in Swords on April 5th last when the accident happened.

Attempts were made to revive the child at the scene. However, he was pronounced dead on arrival at Temple Street Hospital.

The car had been manufactured prior to EU regulations, introduced in 2000, that require electric windows to reverse automatically if they meet a blockage.

The electric window safety feature on this particular Volkswagen model provided that the windows would not operate after the key had been removed from the ignition and the driver's door was opened and shut.

A Garda specialist who examined the car said the safety mechanism was faulty, and the electric windows would continue to operate even when there was no key in the ignition.

While the absence of this safety feature gave a greater opportunity for a child to operate the windows, he said, it could not be definitively established whether this fault contributed to the accident, as when Mr Cirpaci found his son the key was in the ignition.

"The safety mechanism had a malfunction that would certainly contribute to the possibility of a child being trapped.

"However, a previous witness stated that the key was in the ignition, and once we had ignition at all the windows would be able to operate," Garda Adrian Turner told the court.

Other than the faulty switch, the car was in good mechanical condition, Garda Turner said. He added it was probable there were still a number of Volkswagen Passats of this vintage on the road.

Mr Cirpaci gave evidence that around 5pm on the day in question he was upstairs in his house when he heard shouting. He went outside to find his wife and daughter next to the car.

"I saw Isac's neck was trapped in the window and I ran to the car . . . I don't know but I believe he was dead. I saw that the window appeared to be as tight as possible on his neck."

Ms Cirpaci opened the back door and pressed the window release button while Mr Cirpaci pushed down on the window to free Isac.

"He was not breathing. We brought him into the house, his face was very pale, we brought him in and laid him on the sofa. There was a red mark on his neck. I tried to blow into his mouth and pushed on his chest, but there was no pulse."

Ms Cirpaci ran to a neighbour's house and asked her to call an ambulance. A crew arrived at 5.30pm. They tried to resuscitate Isac at the scene before taking him to Temple Street hospital.

"They took Isac and I rang my father-in-law. I then examined the car. The lights were on and the wipers were on. The key is a single key and it was in the ignition. It was just turned once," Mr Cirpaci said.

He then travelled with his father-in-law to the hospital. "When we arrived we were met by a sister and she told us that for 15 minutes everything possible was done, but Isac had died," he told the inquest.

The post-mortem report concluded that Isac had died from asphyxia due to pressure on his neck caused by an electric car window, Dublin city coroner Dr Brian Farrell said.

He said he was satisfied that the key was in the ignition and that the window was activated, either by placing the key in the ignition or by the defect in the safety system.

He was concerned that cars without the automatic reverse window feature were still on the road.

"I would like to alert parents of young children to the dangers involved and I am proposing to write to the Department of Transport in relation to existing pre-2000 cars of this type on the road."

Dr Farrell returned a verdict of accidental death.