The mother of the 8-year-old who was killed at his birthday party is begging other parents to avoid buying this one common decoration that killed her little boy in “one of the most tragic of accidents.”
Little Joshua Dunbar, a bright-eyed 8-year-old full of energy and dreams, had just celebrated his birthday. The house was filled with balloons, party hats, and all the little joys that come with turning another year older. But just hours after the laughter faded, tragedy struck in the most unimaginable way.
‘It was time for him’
On April 27, 2024, Joshua was found alone and unresponsive in his bedroom. A large number eight-shaped helium balloon – meant to mark his milestone birthday – was over his head.
Despite the frantic efforts of his family and the paramedics who rushed him to the hospital, Joshua’s little heart could not be restarted.
“It was absolutely traumatic. You can’t erase it from your mind. You close your eyes, it’s all you see, it’s all you hear. You hear the screams, the shouts, the sirens. You hear the doctor’s words, saying to you that they’re really sorry. It was time for him,” his mother Carly told the Mirror.
“Then I just remember holding his hand. Me and dad had a hand each, and we just held his hands, and I said to him ‘son if your angel wings are there and you’re ready to take them, then take them. Mummy and Daddy and here with you and we’re with you all the way. If you’re ready to go son, you just go in peace,’” the grieving mother said of her son, who she described as “one of a kind with the brightest blue eyes and the cheekiest smile.”
“Literally within minutes he was gone. It was as if he was waiting for me and his dad to give him that OK. These are visions I will never be able to erase or forget.”
Suffocation
At an inquest into his death, the coroner confirmed that Joshua’s cause of death was “consistent with asphyxia involving a helium balloon.”
Though helium itself isn’t toxic, Coroner Andre Rebello told the Liverpool Echo that the gas had displaced the oxygen Joshua needed to breathe.
“The breathing of helium prevented oxygen getting into his body, and without oxygen, within minutes life is not achievable. This was a most tragic day, because it started as a celebration.”
Calling it “one of the most tragic of accidents,” Rebello continued, “Anyone with a heart would speculate as to what he was doing. It may be he was unaware as to the fact that there was no air within the balloon, or it may be that he was trying to see the helium passing over his vocal cords to change his voice. I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
“He was a little boy in his room playing, and tragically it had fatal consequences,” he added, saying a child’s death is a “parent’s worst nightmare.”
‘Stick with air-filled balloons’
Days after the tragic death of her little boy, Carly took to social media calling for a ban on helium-filled balloons.
“There is no cure for a broken heart or the pain of losing your child. Please trust me when I say do not buy your children helium balloons,” she wrote in a Facebook post, per the Daily Mail. “Every day since, I’ve hated myself for buying that balloon that took our boy, and I would never want another child or family to go through this hell! Stick with air filled balloons.”
“Hand on my heart, I would never want another child to lose their life, another family to feel what we feel every single day”
Carly hopes that Joshua’s devastating loss will not be in vain, and she is determined to turn her family’s heartbreak into a life-saving message, begging others to protect their children from the hidden dangers she never saw coming.
“It’s just torture and it doesn’t get easier, it really doesn’t. If one, two, three people stop and think and take onboard what I’m saying and don’t buy a helium balloon, that’s one child death being prevented.”
She adds, “That’s what it’s all about, preventing it happening to another child and the only way to do that is to stop buying helium balloons. Just buy the air ones – they look just as nice.”
So the next time you’re planning a party, think twice before filling the air with floating decorations.
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