Baby survives train accident
2010-05-26 10:36
Melbourne - A 15-month-old boy escaped with just a few cuts and bruises on Wednesday after a train struck his stroller, which rolled onto the tracks when the child's grandmother looked away for just a moment.
Security camera footage shows the stroller rolling over the edge of the platform just as the train pulls into the station. The stroller was pushed a short distance down the tracks before the train came to a halt in front of horrified witnesses.
The dramatic escape comes just seven months after another baby in the southern city of Melbourne survived a train striking his stroller, which had also rolled onto the tracks.
"It's absolutely amazing that this child isn't more injured than what he is, given the circumstances of the accident," paramedic Kate Jessop told reporters. "It would appear, amazingly, that it's nothing more than a couple of grazes and a big fright. ... I was assuming the worst as well and had those awful pictures in my head of a child underneath the train."
The baby and his three-year-old brother were being cared for by their grandmother. She told officials she saw the stroller on the platform, looked away for a moment, and turned back to see it on the track, Jessop said.
Officials have not released the name of the grandmother, and paramedics said she was too distraught to talk.
The boy was in stable condition at Royal Children's Hospital. He suffered some minor facial bruising and grazes to his head, but otherwise appeared fine, Jessop said.
In October, a six-month-old baby survived after his stroller rolled onto the tracks when his mother let go for an instant. Security footage of that escape showed the stroller plunging off a station platform as the commuter train pulls in, and his mother's desperate lunge to grab it. The baby only received a bump on the head.
- AP
