Falling TVs pose a growing danger

The 37-inch television sits in the dirt of the backyard, wet from the rain and dented and cracked from the fury of Alejandro Peña. His hands are swollen and the knuckles scabbed after he attacked the set as if it were a blood enemy.In a way, it is. On Wednesday, the television fell on his 3-year-old daughter, Lizzette, after she tried to climb it to retrieve a toy. The set split her skull, Peña said. "She was such a happy girl," said Peña, his eyes red from a sleepless night spent in tears. While at the hospital, Peña remembered the staff recalling other such similar accidents. "I didn't know this happened so much," he said. In the past year, at Memorial Hermann Hospital alone, there have been 11 injuries from falling televisions. In the past four months, five of those have resulted in death. The extent of the problem at other Houston-area hospitals could not be determined at press time. The previous incident occurred July 6, when 2-year-old Diego Martinez knocked a large television set onto himself and was pinned beneath it for several minutes. He died later that day. There are no national numbers for fatalities, but in 2005, U.S. emergency-room doctors treated 2,600 children younger than 5 injured by falling televisions, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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