‘I can’t even imagine.’ Airbag kills 4-year-old boy in Utah fender-bender, police say

A three-car series of rear-end crashes Wednesday afternoon in Utah ought to have been nothing more than an everyday fender-bender, South Jordan police wrote on Facebook.

But an airbag set off by the 4 p.m. collisions struck 4-year-old D’mondre Brown as he sat in the front seat of a Dodge Neon, killing him, police wrote. No one else was injured, including two other children, ages 7 and 11, in the back seat of the car.

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t even imagine losing my child in an accident like this,” said Lt. Matt Pennington of the South Jordan Police Department, KSL-TV reported. South Jordan is just south of Salt Lake City.

D’mondre, who was wearing a seat belt, was not in a car seat. Police say speed was not a factor in the crash, noting that airbags can deploy in crashes at speeds as low as 10 mph, KSTU reported.

Utah state law requires children under age 8 to be in car seats, and police suggest children under age 13 ride in the back seat, police wrote on Facebook.

“That airbag is coming out at approximately 200 miles per hour,” Pennington said, KSL-TV reported. “Even though you might be going forward at only 30, that’s a 230 mile per hour collision with your body.”

Fully deployed airbags are designed to cushion adults in a collision, but because children are smaller and lighter, they can be thrown forward into a deploying airbag, causing serious injury or death, according to Stanford Children’s Health.

The boy’s father, who was driving the Dodge Neon, has cooperated with the investigation, KSTU reported. “You can understand, he’s crushed,” Pennington said.

This story was originally published January 31, 2019 at 8:48 AM.