At least twelve children had fingers cut off by Maclaren strollers before the company announced in November a "voluntary recall" of all their strollers sold since 1999. None of those 12 were in NYC, but earlier this month it was revealed that a Brooklyn child has joined their unhappy ranks. The parents of Shannon Windram, who was 2½ at the time of the accident in March 2004, have filed the first NYC lawsuit against Maclaren. And now the Sunset Park family has shared their traumatic experience with the media.
Shannon was with her mom Elizabeth at the Fleet Bank on Fifth Avenue at 69th Street when the accident, allegedly caused by a Maclaren Quest stroller, occurred. "It just felt helpless, seeing our baby there with a portion of her finger hanging by a thread of skin and hoping for a miracle," her dad Thomas, 44, tells the Post. "It just tore a deep hole in our hearts that we haven't been able to heal to this day." Doctors reattached the finger, but a few weeks later the tip blackened and Shannon had to have the tip amputated.
It seems that most of the fingers have been severed in the carriage hinge because of Maclaren's one-handed folding/unfolding mechanism. Besides the lawsuits, the company could be hit with a fine of $1 million or more because federal law requires companies to "report to CPSC immediately on learning of a problem with a product that makes it a substantial hazard or poses a potential hazard," according to CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson. "I wouldn't want any other children to go through this situation," Thomas Windram tells the Post. "It doesn't just affect the child. It affects the parents. You never heal from it."
