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Mostly Cloudy County bans sale of dropside cribs
Bellmore-Merrick residents testify about the deaths of their children
Bobby Cirigliano of North Bellmore lived for six months and three days. He died Sept. 15, 2004, when his head was caught in between the dropside rail and the mattress of his crib, and he suffocated. He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He never returned home.
On Monday, Bobby’s parents, Robert and Susan Cirigliano, pleaded with the Nassau County Legislature to ban the sale of dropside cribs locally, citing the potential danger of suffocation among infants.
Bobby was the second of the Ciriglianos’ four children. “He had an older sister who never got the chance to teach him how to get into and out of trouble,” Susan told legislators, “a younger brother and sister he never met, two grandfathers he never played catch with.”
Michelle Witt of Merrick lost her son Tyler on Dec. 12, 1997, when he became caught in his dropside crib in the same way. “The last image I have of my precious son is [his being] trapped and killed in a crib that I thought was his only safe haven,” Witt said.
After brief deliberation, the Legislature passed a measure on Monday to ban dropside cribs, becoming the second county in the nation to effect such a ban. Suffolk County was the first, last month.
Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, was a primary sponsor of the measure. He said he hopes the ban will be enacted statewide and, eventually, nationally.
“The figures are astounding,” Denenberg said. Between 2005 and 2007, he said, there were hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries involving dropside cribs nationally. The Stork Craft corporation recently recalled 2.2 million such cribs, including 147,000 with the Fisher-Price logo, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Denenberg applauded the Ciriglianos and Witt for coming forward to testify before the Legislature, given the pain they must still feel because of their children’s deaths.
“Mommy and Daddy -- we only heard three of our four children say that because our son Bobby never had a chance,” Susan Cirigliano said.
