A 12-year-old boy died after apparently playing a game of chicken on a parking lot gate in Brooklyn. According to the Daily News, Yakim McDaniels was on the roll-down gate when, around 4:30 p.m., "a car moved to leave the lot and the horrific accident occurred." A witness explained, "The gate is automatic, the car was coming out and the gate started rising." Yakim was trapped—his hand and then apparently his upper body was caught in the gate.
The Post reports, "Neighbors said Yakim and four other restless boys were at the Lott Avenue parking facility playing a challenge game. Under the rules, the players would hitch a ride on the gate as it goes up, then they jump off. The jump gets more difficult as the gate rises. The last one to jump off wins." Witnesses think Yakim was too scared to jump, but "The gate kept moving upward -- until it stopped with Yakim’s head got caught in the wedge opening 20 feet above the sidewalk and his feet dangled below." The fire department—which could only see Yakim's legs—had to cut through the gate to remove Yakim, who was pronounced dead 30 minutes later a hospital.
A witness told the Post, “My son yelled, 'Daddy, look at the boy. He’s stuck!' “So I ran out. He was like rolled up at the top and he was shaking, like convulsing. He did that for 5 or 10 minutes and just stopped... We were yelling, 'Can you say something? Are you all right?' But he wasn’t saying nothing, just shaking. Then he stopped all of a sudden. You could tell." Then rescue crews removed Yakim, whose mother said, "The cops could have saved him."
The cars inside the lot, which is owned by Reliant Realty, have a sensor that alerts the gate to open when they are near. Apparently it will stop if it hits someone on the way down but there's no mechanism for it to stop if someone is stuck as the gate rise. Reliant Realty told the Daily News it was looking at fixing it, but City Councilman Charles Barron said, "This community is sick of being gated - the company that runs it refuses to put up recreational facilities and tragedies like this end up happening. The kids have nowhere to play so the company is responsible for the death of this child."
