CHILD CHOKED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18992, 17 April 1936, Page 2

CHILD CHOKED

SINGULAR FATALITY PIECE OF LOBSTER'S CLAW A fatality took place at Korakonui on Wednesday, when a Maori child, Pat Tahi ll.uliepa, aged 12 months, died ns a result of inadvertently swallowing a portion of a lobster's claw. An inquest 'was held later before the district coroner, Mr. G. A. Empson. The child's mother, .Mrs. Mootu Tahi Holiepa. said she was attending to her household duties when she noticed the child choking. She thought, he might .have swallowed a seed from a pumpkin which she had been cutting, and shook him to relieve him, but, the child got worse and went, blue in the face. She then ran for assistance to a neighbour, Mr. A. .1. Gallagher, who immediately conveyed the child in his motor-car to a doctor in Te Awainutu. On arrival the doctor pronounced the child dead, and she hud since been informed that a piece of a lobster's (law had been removed from the child's throat. Some of her family had consumed a lobster the previous" evening, and they must have left the part lying about, the whare, where the child picked it up. A. J. Gallagher, farmer, of Korakonui, said that he motored the child 1.5 miles to the nearest doctor in Te, Awamutu. The child appeared limp and lifeless on leaving his home. Dr. L. S. Rogers said the child ap-peared-to have been dead about half an hour when brought to him. On the coroner's instructions, he had performed n post-morten examination, and had found a portion of a lobster's claw in the windpipe. In his opinion the cause of death was tracheal obstruction, due to the claw, which apparently had been swallowed inadvertently. The coroner returned a- verdict in accordance with the medical evidence.