Idiot 7 year old gets injured in washing machine

Last night on the late news on television there was a story about a mom and her kids at the nearby laudromat.

One of the washing machines had an "Out of Order" sign on it, and the 7 year old son decided to crawl inside. Suddenly the machine started moving with the boy inside. What was the moo doing when the brat crawled inside-she was busy feeding the baby while waiting. The report said the kid was in the machine for about three minutes before moo discovered him in there and taken to the hospital.

DCF is also investigating the case to find out whether it's a case of negligence.

Three minutes? There must not have been anyone else in the laundromat. I personally believe it's negligent, but dolefully predict that once again, a la the kid-left-in-the-car moms, she'll get off scot free and perhaps even sue the laundromat for having an "attractive nuisance" or the like....

Unfortunately, I suspect this is the way things will go. Other people having to pay for Moo's lack of attention. After akk, it takes a village, doncha know?

Oh I'm sure the moo will own the laundromat after this incident.

Cuz you know, it's certainly NOT HER fault her kid was unattended and injured himself.

hey i saw this on the news yesterday too. south florida right?

can u believe she wants to sue the laundromat because she wasn't watching HER child?!!

i lol'ed so hard at that.

here's a video of it - http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/9/11/Trapped_in_washer_911

i hope the laundromat sues her for being an idiot.

How could that moomie NOT notice that her 7 y/o kyd was playing around machinery? I thought the days of kyds getting hurt in or on washing machines went out with the wringer washers they kept getting their arms torn off in. It takes a pretty stupid kyd to voluntarily get inside of an appliance. What could be the fascination of playing in an appliance, unless the kyd is a few brain cells shy of a frontal lobe? They died in refrigerators until they made them open from the inside, industrial dryers, and if they could fit inside of microwaves we'd probably see a lot of those type deaths as well. It doesn't make a difference if it was out of order or in perfct working condition, it's MOOMIE'S fault that the kyd was allowed to crawl in and the kyd himself should bear some of the responsibility. Seven years old is plenty old enough to know better than to pull some foolish, nonsensical, stupid stunt like that.

Oh, wait, it gets better. In southwest Virginia—that is, Appalachia—a 5-year-old girl, Rebecca Hope Wagoner, died after her 14-year-old half-wit—I mean, half-brother—placed her in a front-loader washing machine in a laundromat. The machine supposedly started on its own because of a manufacturer's defect, and the girl drowned before the moo could break the glass to free her. Moo had stepped out while the boy and girl were alone unsupervised in the self-serve laundromat. (One news story at the time said she had stepped out to smoke.)

If you can believe this, the incident was the basis of an off-Broadway play, Washing Machine, performed last year.

Here's a sample story about the aftermath:

http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=558319&nid=25

Judge Dismisses Manslaughter Charge in Washing Machine Death

[26 August 2005]

MARION, Va. (AP) - With the backing of a prosecutor, a judge dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against a teenager who placed his 5-year-old half sister in a coin-operated washing machine.
The prosecutor, Roy Evans, said discussions with lawyers for the boy, who is 14, and law enforcement agencies led him to conclude the teenager would not be convicted in the death of Hope Wagoner on June 17 in Chilhowie. [[i]He had faced up to 10 years if tried as an adult.—K-Man[/i]]

A Smyth County judge, Charles Lincoln, dismissed the criminal charge against the teenager on Thursday.

The boy put no coins in the machine but it started anyway, his attorney said.

Hope's mother, Rebecca Wagoner, has filed an $18.9 million lawsuit against the washing machine's maker, claiming the company knew the model had a history of starting up without the insertion of coins but has failed to fix the problem.

In response to the lawsuit, the machine's maker, the Pellerin Milnor Corp. of Louisiana, has said the machine had received a new electronic coin-counter before the accident.

John Graham, who represents the 14-year-old, called Hope's death "a tragic accident."

"This happened during a playful game between brother and sister," he said.

Graham said the boy "frantically tried to stop" the washer to free his sister. "He finally took a large rock from the parking lot and smashed at the glass. He was frantic."

Rebecca Wagoner ultimately used the same rock to smash the glass and was able to pull Hope from the machine. The child died of asphyxiation, a medical examiner ruled.

Wagoner's suit claims the Pellerin Milnor Corp. has had to replace more than 1,500 of the "failure-prone" electronic coin counters. The suit also names as defendants the owners of the Chilhowie Laundromat.

[[i]The laundromat closed after the girl's death. The owners said then, three years ago, that it may never reopen. I fail to see how the laundromat can be held liable in any way, even if the machine did malfunction. By the way, most self-serve laundromats have signs prohibiting placing people or animals in the washers or dryers. But this is idiot moos and kyds for you.—K-Man[/i]]

K-Man:

"... a 5-year-old girl, Rebecca Hope Wagoner, died after her 14-year-old half-wit—I mean, half-brother—placed her in a front-loader washing machine in a laundromat. The machine supposedly started on its own because of a manufacturer's defect..."

*cough-cough* BULLSHIT! *cough!*

14yo half-brother was probably sick of the little brat. After placing her in the front loader, he "leaned against the machine" or "slipped" and "accidentally" placed a coin in the slot...

*sigh*, Tragic "accidents" do happen...

Despite a lot of digging online, I cannot find the status of the moo Rebecca Billings Wagoner's suit against the washing machine manufacturer, so I suspect it was settled out of court. Her excuse for leaving the laundromat was to use the pay phone, she claimed. At least one news story at the time said differently, I recall (that is, she went out to smoke). But the machine, a triple-load model, had nearly finished the wash cycle by the time she returned inside, so that was a long pay phone call.

She sued the laundromat because no disconnect switch to shut off power to the machine was nearby. There seems to be no listing for Village Laundry or Laundromat in Chilhowie, so it's very probably out of business.

The family was a bunch of real "winners" anyway. (/sarcasm) During the same month the charges were dropped against the boy, August 2005, the moo filed for a protective order against her estranged husband. He was not listed on the suit as a co-plaintiff because he was a convicted felon. In addition, in the house were other children, whom county CPS temporarily removed after the girl's death in June 2005 pending an investigation into neglect. Somehow, when I was reading all this, I could faintly hear "Dueling Banjos" playing...

But I'd love to know what became of the suit. It's been three years, so something should have resulted by now.

I went digging, too, and found some interesting quotes in a washington post article:

"Operating properly, the Milnor Automatic Washer-Extractor has a 31-minute wash cycle, its inside drum making 451 revolutions per minute during a high-speed spin cycle. Officials said the door's heavy snap-latch must be shut before the machine will take the 11 quarters it needs to run. Then it locks air-tight and won't open again until the wash cycle is complete."

The Wagoners live two doors from the Village Laundry. Rebecca Wagoner told police she had gone there to use the pay phone to call her husband, bringing along her daughter and son. She told police she was outside when things went wrong.

Hope's father, William Wagoner, in a brief interview Thursday insisted that there is "more to the story than you know." Although residents in the town portrayed the Wagoners' relationship as on-again, off-again -- they share children from previous marriages -- William Wagoner said they are very much together as a family. He said he was reluctant to go into details until he spoke with his attorney, but he portrayed the facts underlying his daughter's death as "a story you are never going to believe."

"We're a happy family," he said. "No abuse. . . . But let me ask you, do you believe one turn of events leads to another?"

Wagoner didn't stay on the phone long enough to answer his own question.

-------

It was also pointed out on some discussion forum that for this machine it's necessary not only to put in coins but also to turn a dial in order for it to start the cycle you choose.

Oh, and she did sue, for $18.9 million. Wonder what the settlement was...

"This happened during a playful game between brother and sister," he said.


I do NOT see how a 14 y/o could think that placing his 5 y/o half sister in an industrial machine could be "playful". I also don't see how the washer could have filled up and began agitating too fast for them to break the glass on it either. The SECOND he realized it was locked shut and on, IF he had given a damn, why wasn't he summoning help from passersby? I am pretty sure that if I had been present that I could have found a way to shut off the power, or grabbed a tire iron, rock, SOMETHING and broken that glass in the time it took for that child to suffocate. I think that the "estranged" jailbird husband knows something, judging by his comments. Perhaps they had tried to kill that kyd in the past.

I haven't been to a laundromat in quite some time, but I remember noticing that ALL of the washers/dryers have accessible electrical outlets. Maybe this new one was bigger and closer to the wall, who knows. It STILL had to have a power source and I find it hard to believe that a 14 y/o boy couldn't move the washer just enough to unplug it. Afterall, repairmen have to move them all of the time. SURELY he AND his mother could have wriggled it from the wall a few inches, IF they had tried.

k-man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Despite a lot of digging online, I cannot find the
> status of the moo Rebecca Billings Wagoner's suit
> against the washing machine manufacturer, so I
> suspect it was settled out of court. Her excuse
> for leaving the laundromat was to use the pay
> phone, she claimed.

Ya know, every laundromat I've ever been in, and it's been a lot, has had a pay phone either inside the 'mat, or attached to the front.
Her real excuse for leaving the laundromat was that she had placed her child in the washer, turned it on and knew it was a bad idea to stick around in case anyone showed up.

And I've never, ever, seen a washer start up on it's own accord. Those big industrial ones you really have to work to get closed properly, and you have to put money in for them to start. I highly doubt anyone could get one closed, and started, from the inside. The regular ones...well, they still need money to get going.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

married with rabbits Wrote:

>
>
> Absolutely not. This reminds me of being slightly
> tormented by my older brother when I was even
> younger than 5. My mom thought we were loudly
> "playing" when really he was hoisting me up inside
> a bedsheet and I was panicking. If I got upset or
> cried when he wouldn't leave me alone, I was being
> "bad." He frequently got me in trouble and I
> suppose I still resent him for that because he
> tried to sabotage me 6 years ago and he still
> seems to have it out for me, but that's another
> story.
>
> If my mom had stepped outside of her neurotic head
> space for a little while, she would have seen that
> my brother didn't play nice. Is it better that she
> was more neurotic than lazy? Which one is worse?

both are horrendous. Crazies are not accountable because they are crazy but they are evil enuf (my opinion) that when confronted, they pull 'I'm a good little moo' act. Crazies who murder their kids will get up in court and simp 'but I wuuuv my pwecious, I don't know why i did it.. ' I don't buy the crazy or neurotic excuse one iota. So therefore, I would happily pull the switch on a crazy moo or duh. No one wants to sterilize whacked out people though. (It all proves my point that people really don't give a damn what they inflict on children.)

I hope you avoid your famblee. Sometimes it is like going cold turkey to pull the plug on famblee because of entrenched interpersonal relationships: it is almost like a drug.