A 9-year-old girl and her mother were both found dead after falling to their deaths from the 3rd-floor railing of the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in China on 10 March.
The mother and daughter visited the museum with the girl’s grandmother at the time of the tragedy and were believed to have been resting in a seated area on the third floor before the incident.
The girl had been standing on the seats at the time and missed her footing, resulting in her falling over the glass railing that was behind their seat.
The girl’s mother, in desperation, tried to grab her daughter, but the both of them ended up falling over the railing and to their deaths from a height of more than 20 metres.
The grandmother was seen in photos crying beside the woman and the little girl, who were both lying on the ground motionless.
According to reports coming out of China, the girl was pronounced dead at the scene, while her mother had initially survived the fall but later died in the hospital.
Netizens have questioned the design of the immediate area where the girl and woman fell, pointing out that the railing was not high enough to prevent such incidents from happening.
However, other netizens highlighted that the height of the railings were already at a grown person’s chest level, and said that the child shouldn’t have been standing on the seats in the first place.
Some pointed out that the seats shouldn’t have been placed near the glass railings at all, which contributed to the tragedy.
Netizens’ comments
- This is what happens when parents just leave their child alone and let them do all sorts of inappropriate things. Sad tragedy for the family, I’m sure the guilt will be eating at them since this could have been prevented if they just disciplined their child. Hope other parents learn from this.
- Always need to punish child when doing dangerous action on the spot and parent should not always looking on the the phone… Always need to be staying attention on child no matter what age are they. Nothing happen does not mean that will not happen….
- I’m a mother to an adhd 9yo child and it’s not easy to control their behaviour even after repeated warnings, bcos of this I rarely bring them to outings.