(DailyVantage.com) – A 5-year-old Maryland boy was killed last Friday after the bounce house at an Atlantic League professional baseball game was swept up by a gust of wind while filled with children.
According to an August 3 statement from the Charles County Government, the bounce house at Waldorf’s Regency Furniture Stadium rose 15 to 20 feet into the air during a Southern Maryland Blue Crabs baseball game Friday night, sending some of the children inside falling to the ground.
One of the children, an unidentified 5-year-old boy, was airlifted to Washington, DC’s Children’s National Hospital where he was later pronounced dead. A second child was also treated at Children’s National Hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.
South Maryland Blue Crabs general manager Courtney Knichel expressed the team’s condolences to the family of the boy killed in the incident as well as its concern for the other injured child.
The bounce house was located above right field in a fence-off, elevated area. After the gust of wind sent the structure airborne, it crash-landed on the ballfield not far from the first base line.
According to Charles County spokeswoman Jennifer Harris, the bounce house is typically set up in a play area reserved for children during the ballgames.
This isn’t the first fatality associated with bounce houses.
In April, a 2-year-old Arizona boy was killed and a second child injured when a gust of wind sent a bounce house aloft before it dropped into a neighboring lot.
Six children were killed during an end-of-school celebration in Australia in 2021 after the bounce castle they were playing in was caught by a gust of wind that sent it 30 feet into the air.
According to a University of Georgia study, bounce houses caught in gusts of wind have caused 28 deaths and 479 injuries worldwide between 2000 and 2021.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission advises that bounce houses should not be used when wind speeds are more than 15 miles per hour.
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