A 5-year-old boy has tragically died after he sustained head injuries at a popular tourist attraction in the US on Friday.
A police spokesperson confirmed that the young boy was critically injured in a freak accident at the ‘Sun Dial’ rotating restaurant at the top of the Westin Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia at around 3:20 p.m on Friday.
Atlanta Police Department spokesperson, Warren Pickard, told local news station 11Alive that the boy and his family were visiting the city and were at the restaurant for lunch. The station reports that the youngster’s parents were sitting at a table when the five-year-old apparently wandered a few feet away and got caught between the rotating portion of the floor and a wall, a space of just 4 to 5 inches.
“We simply think he lost sight of his parents and panicked and found himself in that situation. A small child don’t know what to do in those moments, and it crushed his little small body.”
Pickard said that staff and customers immediately jumped to try to assist that child and also administer first aid,
“The amount of people who were helping was amazing. They were moving furniture, they were pulling chairs…chairs that were bolted to the floor…they were pulling them up to try to get the child out.”
Although emergency services arrived at the restaurant within minutes, the young boy was reported to have been unconscious when he was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he later died.
The popular Sun Dial restaurant and tourist attraction at the top of the Westin Hotel, offers a 360-degree view of the large American city via its clockwise rotating floor and height 70 stories from ground level. Atlanta Police stated that the restaurant floor has a motion sensor that automatically stops the rotation when it senses something is trapped. However, Pickard said in this instance, although the floor stopped revolving, it was too late for the child whose head took the brunt force of the injury.
The restaurant remained closed for the remainder of the Easter weekend. George Reed, hotel manager for the Westin Peachtree Plaza, told 11Alive that the hotel is working with authorities to assist them in their investigation:
“Words cannot express the depths of our sorrow. Our thoughts remain with the family.”
