Window Blind Cords Still Pose A Deadly Risk To Children

Andrea Sutton, a mom in Firestone, Colo., was trying to put her 3-year-old son Daniel down for a nap, but he wasn't having it. It was January, too cold for him to burn off much energy outside, and he was restless. She read him some books to settle him down and then left him to fall asleep.

She returned with her 4-year-old daughter a little while later to check on him. They found him hanging from the cord of the window blinds, wearing like a necklace the V-shaped strings above a wooden knob that lowers when the blinds go up.

"When my daughter and I found him, we didn't know how long he was strangling," says Sutton, who now, eight years later, lives in Berthoud, Colo. She immediately called 911 and did CPR until the paramedics arrived. "They tried to do as much as they could, but I knew he was gone," she says. "A mom just knows."

She does not know exactly what happened. The coroner said Daniel probably wanted to look out the window, and Sutton said he may have pushed his small car-shaped toddler bed slightly closer to the window to reach. The blinds had only