Child (1) dies after becoming entangled in window blind cord

A 13-month-old girl died when she suffocated after becoming entangled in a window blind cord at her home in Cork city on Tuesday.

The infant, named locally as Leah Troy, was discovered entangled in the cord by her mother, Alice O’Sullivan, at their house at Delaney Park in Dublin Hill on Cork’s northside shortly after midday.

The emergency services were alerted and the child was rushed by ambulance to Cork University Hospital where emergency department staff worked to resuscitate her. However, they were unable to assist the child.

Leah was pronounced dead at the hospital yesterday afternoon and her parents, Mick and Alice and their four-year-old daughter were last night being comforted by relatives and friends.

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Gardaí in Mayfield said they were treating the child’s death as a tragic accident and, following a postmortem on Wednesday, they will prepare a file on the death for an inquest at the local coroner’s court.

One local resident told The Irish Times: "People on Dublin Hill are devastated - the place is just numb. It's a horrible tragedy for the family and everyone's heart goes out to them at their loss."

A US study in 2015 found that nearly 17,000 young children were injured in accidents involving window blinds while almost 300 died, in most cases after becoming entangled in the cords.

It is not the first death of its kind in Ireland. An inquest in 2010 into a similar tragedy in Co Kilkenny heard that on average, since 2005, three children a year have died in the State from asphyxiation after getting caught up in blind cords.

In February 2009, a two-year-old boy died when he became entangled in a blind cord while playing at his family home in Carrigtwohill in east Co Cork.

Earlier this year, an inquest in Dublin heard how a 17-month-old boy died of asphyxia after he became entangled in a blind cord while taking a nap in a cot at his home in December 2016.

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane returned a narrative verdict setting out the circumstances of the child’s death.