Baby Seriously Injured by Falling Phone at Belgian Fair Ride

The incident occurred on Thursday. Little Oussaid remained in his stroller with his brothers behind the safety barriers while his mother, Maggy Bultot, and her husband decided to take a ride on a high-speed attraction. "We never do this, because my husband doesn’t really like it, but this time he said yes. So Oussaid stayed in his stroller with his sisters, behind the safety barriers. From up high, I saw a crowd gathering around the stroller. At first, I thought it was probably people my daughters knew," his mother tells La Dernière Heure.

Once on the ground, Maggy discovers that her baby has been seriously injured on the forehead. "I was in total panic, there was so much blood. A phone fell from the ride and hit his head. At such speed, it’s as if it had been a brick! A man, trained in first aid, compressed the wound until the ambulance arrived." The little boy is still in the hospital. "We could see the bone of his skull, the wound is so deep. We were asked if we would like to have reconstructive surgery later, we said yes. The doctors have therefore resealed the wound with glue to get a better result than with stitches. But this Friday, despite the care, the wound is still bleeding. He has a hole in the middle of his forehead," confides the mother who mentions a cerebral concussion.

Maggy calls for measures to be taken to prevent such tragedies from occurring. "It is absolutely necessary for fairground operators to take measures, for a box to be made available to customers who cannot secure their phone in a bag or entrust it to someone for the duration of the ride. This is already done in some places but it’s not widespread. Above all, customers need to be aware of the risks they are taking. A phone that crashes to the ground, too bad. But a phone that hits the head of a child sitting quietly in his stroller is intolerable," she says.

Maggy Bultot continues: "My 14-year-old daughters entrusted their phone to the manager of an attraction. They are teenagers, but they think! Today, one of my daughters feels guilty. But she could never have predicted what happened. No one could have." However, the mother of little Oussaid deplores the fairground operator’s reaction: "He reassured me that everything would be in order with the insurance, but he didn’t seem to realize the seriousness of the situation, telling me that phones falling is about thirty cases each week..." "We are still in shock from what happened. I really want to raise awareness among fairground operators and people who go on these rides: this must never happen again!"