Video Shows Dresser Toppling On Toddler: How You Can Prevent It In Your Home
By Cleve Bryan and Jim Donovan
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It was Thursday when 2-year-olds Brock and Browdy Shoff were playing in the bedroom of their home. In a video, the toddlers can be seen climbing into the open drawers of their dresser and before long, it topples over, pinning Brock underneath.
A video camera in their room captured the incident. Somehow, Brody was able to eventually push the dresser enough to free his brother Brock.
Kayli Shoff said that her and her husband did not hear the commotion and only knew what the boys had been through when they watched the video. "I felt like the worst mom," she said.
This was the latest incident involving an Ikea product. Last June, the store recalled nearly 29 million dressers and chests that were at risk of tipping over. This came after the deaths of three children since 2014.
Kayli explained that the dresser in her boys' room was the 8 drawer Hemnes, which was not a part of the recall. However, Ikea's website warns on the product page that serious or fatal crashing injuries could result from the furniture tipping over and to prevent, furniture must be permanently fixed to the wall.
The company provides anchoring in the packaging.
Ikea released a statement in regards to this incident:
"We want to emphasize that the best way to prevent the tip-over of chests of drawers is to anchor products to the wall. Ikea has included restraints with our chests of drawers for decades, and wall attachment is an integral part of the assembly instructions."
The Consumer Products Safety Commission is investigating this most recent incident adding that it's "actively working with the entire furniture industry to create a stronger safety standard that will make furniture more inherently stable."
Both brothers are doing fine, with no bumps or bruises. The family has since bolted the dresser to the wall. They've even removed the knobs so the kids can not climb on it.
"Everybody needs to bolt down their dressers to the wall," Kayli said.
Professional baby proofer Jeff Gansky from Kidproteq, which services eastern Pennsylvania, says any dresser or bookcase regardless of height should have a safety strap. "In a piece where a good bit of the weight is in the drawers, imagine all the drawers being pulled out," explained Gansky. "You have the center of gravity going from the middle to the front."
Gansky demonstrated to Eyewitness News how to attach a strap from a new dresser in meteorologist Katie Fehligher's nursery to a stud in the closet wall.
Fehligher says now that her twin daughters Parker and Kaeden are starting to walk and become more adventurous, she and her husband are finding new things they need to secure.
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"Frankly I think that took a lot of guts for that mom to put that video out there because a lot of people could be putting her down for having allowed that to happen in the first place," sais Fehligher.
She continued, "I'm grateful she did because it really reminded me that we've got things we need to secure here and baby proof in our very own home."
