Unfiltered Story #314716

I was out at the local mall with my girlfriend, we were out and about during one of our open periods from high school.

(Open Periods: at my school the seniors were allowed to go off the campus grounds during open period as long as you had good attendance and good grades. Because our school days were in a block format, so we only had 4 classes each quarter and each class was about 90 minutes long. So if you had an open period you had 90 minutes of nothing to do and if you could leave the school grounds if you were allowed.)

We drove out to the mall and started walking around. We wandered into one of the large clothing retail stores and we were looking at things and trying different clothing on for a little while. Eventually we grew tired of this and started to leave. As we were walking towards an exit, about 20ft away a worker was at the register helping a guest check out.

This lady that was checking out had a small child with her. The kid looked to be maybe 6 or 7 years old, just old enough to get into trouble when they’re bored. A short distance behind the lady checking out was a railing that comes out of the ground and goes up about 2ft high and is about 12ft long. The use of the rail was to line up the shopping carts next to it, it really had no other purpose than a makeshift spot to put shopping carts.

I stopped my girlfriend and point out the young child and tell her that the kid is going to get hurt because the mom is not paying any attention to the kid. My girlfriend yelled over to lady to watch her kid, but the lady told us to mind our own business. So, we did. We stood there and watched…..

Me (to my girlfriend): That kid is going to crack his head on the ground.

Girlfriend: I know and the mom doesn’t care.

The kid is working on climbing up on the side of the shopping carts and then on top of the railing next to them. The kid is now sitting on the railing like a chair, he’s not straddling it (one leg on each side, like riding a horse), he has his legs dangling off one side. The kid has no support in front or behind him now and he’s just kind of slowly leaning forward and backwards as he sits upon the railing.

Sure enough, the kid leans back too far and falls! We hear a sickening thud as the kid’s head literally bounces off the hard concrete floor below. I see the kid do one of those, “it hurts so bad and I want to scream, but I can’t catch my breath” silent screams and he’s just squirming on the ground.

My girlfriend and I are a good 20-25ft away from the kid and we heard the kid’s head bounce off the concrete, but the mom was oblivious to it. Thankfully the cashier was paying attention and got the mom to turn around.

I don’t know what the outcome of everything was, I just know that there was no blood on the floor from where the kid fell. I’m guessing at worse a fractured skull with a severe concussion and at the best a really big goose egg bump and a bad headache for the rest of the day.