http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_on_re_us/us_cabinet_topples

WACO, Texas – A large open cabinet with children playing inside toppled on a 5-year-old girl at a Texas middle school, killing her.

The accident occurred Wednesday in the gymnasium at G.L. Wiley Middle School in Waco. School district official Dale Caffey says two or three children, including 5-year-old Princanna (prihn-SA'-nah) Strain, climbed into the rolling, portable cabinet while chasing a lizard. That's when the cabinet toppled on Princanna.

She was pronounced dead at a hospital. No other students were injured.

Princanna was a kindergartner at J.H. Hines Elementary School. Hines students have been relocated to Wiley while a new elementary school is being built.

Counselors are at Wiley to console the Hines students, staff and faculty.

How tragic. :(

How awful; her poor parents.

How tragic :( My prayers go out to her family.

I do have to wonder how many adults were supervising the children at the time of the accident. I know accidents do happen, but if the children weren't being supervised properly, then the school should be held responsible. This cabinet clearly wasn't a safe thing for the children to be playing with. I know things can happen in a heartbeat, but I've also seen teachers chatting with each other with their backs turned towards the children.

How tragic :( My prayers go out to her family.

I do have to wonder how many adults were supervising the children at the time of the accident. I know accidents do happen, but if the children weren't being supervised properly, then the school should be held responsible. This cabinet clearly wasn't a safe thing for the children to be playing with. I know things can happen in a heartbeat, but I've also seen teachers chatting with each other with their backs turned towards the children.
Exactly. Besides, why were they chasing a lizard? Makes me wonder if ANY faculty members were paying attention and minding the store. ohno: :mad:

Very tragic :(
Sadly something similar happened a few years back at a Beaumont Texas daycare center, a little girl was killed by a large roll of paper towels when it fell off a shelf.
I agree, better supervision is defiantly needed in some cases.

How awful! I agree that if the kids weren't being supervised then the school should definitely be held responsible. Since these kids were only in kindergarten and were being schooled at the junior high, this is very disturbing. I understand the need to relocate them but they should have had extra supervision. It should be common sense to give younger kids more supervision; especially if they were allowed to run free in the same areas as the junior high students.

It kind of scared me at first when I read that this happened in Texas because I was born and raised there, and my mom taught elementary school for well over 30 years. She would be devastated if she knew about this.

This is very sad. I feel awful for the little girl's family, her classmates who witnessed this, and the teacher who will feel guilty for the rest of her life.

I will say that as a first grade teacher the one year I had to relocate my class to the highschool because of renovations on my building was the WORST year of my teaching career and the most dangerous for the kids. In an elementary school we are used to furniture being secured, outlets being plugged, and room for kids to move and play. In upper-level buildings there is not that need for as many safety measures and therefore they are not available to you. I remember teaching how to count pennies and I had all the kids in groups on the floor. One girl grabbed a penny and tried to stick it in the electrical outlet. I was able to grab it away before anything happened because I was looking at her at the time. But there were 20 other kids and if I had been trying to help someone else she could have been electricuited. When you are monitoring so many children at once, anything can happen, especially when you are in a new place and possibly not familiar with all the lurking dangers. Maybe the teacher did not know the cabinet was not secure, maybe she was putting a bandaid of another child's knee or trying to deal with a kid who was screaming because there was a lizard loose in the room. I believe this probably was an accident, but I am surprised the teacher hasn't been sued yet for negligence. It is coming I am sure. Not that I feel the family doesn't deserve some sort of retribution on befalf of their daughter, but I would bet the school district is more to blame than anyone for putting little kids in the middle school in the first place.