A Utah mother released a video online that appears to show an Ikea dresser tumbling onto her twin 2-year-old kids and pinning one of them, who was only able to free himself with the assistance of his sibling.
The video, which the family claims was filmed last week, provides a chilling view of the hazard that forced Ikea to recall 29 million dressers in an unprecedented recall last year.
It has received over 2.6 million views since being released on YouTube on Saturday.
Ricky Shoff, the boy’s father, stated in a Facebook post that he was hesitant to release the video but that the family did so to bring awareness.
“Please double-check that all of your dressers are anchored to the wall,” he added. “Thank you for sharing.”
Ikea dressers have been linked to the deaths of at least seven toddlers, including one in West Chester in 2014, prompting US Consumer Product Safety Commission investigations and a recall last summer.
The commission’s spokesperson, Scott Wolfson, said on Tuesday that the organization would look into the Orem incident.
“Fortunately, this incident did not result in a catastrophe; nonetheless, far too many children are sent to the ER each year because furniture and televisions spilled over,” Wolfson said in a statement.
In a statement, Ikea spokesperson Mona Astra Liss said the dresser in the video looks to be an Ikea dresser, but the business was working to confirm this.
She asked owners of recalled Ikea dressers to participate in the recall and restated the company’s position that anchoring furniture to the wall is the best method to prevent tip-overs, calling it an “integral component of the assembly instructions.”
The business, which has its North American headquarters in Conshohocken, has insisted that its dressers should be anchored to the wall and has given new wall-anchoring kits to accomplish so.
However, as part of last year’s recall, Ikea removed half of its dressers from the market and admitted that they did not fulfill the industry’s applicable safety standard, which is designed to ensure that even unsecured dressers achieve a minimum level of stability.
Last month, the shop agreed to pay $50 million to the families of three boys who were murdered after dressers from the company’s popular, low-cost Malm range tipped over.
According to their mother, Kayli, the unsecured dresser that appeared to tumble upon the twins in Utah was an eight-drawer Hemnes. The Inquirer tried unsuccessfully to contact her.
Although other items in the Hemnes range were recalled by Ikea, that model was not among them.
A home surveillance camera installed in the boys’ room filmed the mishap.
The brothers, Bowdy and Brock, are seen pushing on the dresser drawers, causing the item to fall forward.
Bowdy is able to effortlessly release himself, however, Brock is almost completely pinned beneath him and is struggling to break free. Bowdy manages to push the dresser far enough for his brother to wriggle out from behind it after nearly two minutes.
“You can tell on the video that he’s in pain and that he says, ‘I need to help my brother,’” Kayli Shoff told CBS. “He pushed it away from him in some way. It’s because it’s a hefty dresser.”
She took her twins to a pediatrician after the mishap, who found that they had not been gravely wounded in the tip-over, she told NBC News.
Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), who sponsored federal legislation in June to impose a mandatory safety standard for dressers on the furniture industry, called the video “horrifying” on Tuesday.
Casey stated that he would resubmit the STURDY Act, which was delayed last year.