4-Year-Old Boy Dies After Being Impaled By Glass From Fallen Picture Frame While Playing At Home

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

A Pennsylvania mother is mourning the loss of her 4-year-old son, who died on Wednesday after he was impaled by a piece of glass from a failed picture frame, PEOPLE confirms.

The young boy was playing with his two sisters in his North Philadelphia home when a picture frame fell from a wall and a shard of broken glass impaled him, according to WPVI and a Philadelphia Police Department spokesperson.

The spokesperson confirmed the incident to PEOPLE but did not release the name of neither the victim nor the victim's mother. However, Amanda Velez has spoken out about the incident in the aftermath of her son, Adrian Ortega's death.

I'm using the restroom, I hear a loud bang, and I heard glass shatter. I heard my youngest daughter, who's 2 years old, she was screaming,”Velez told WCAU.

She added to Fox News: “I heard him screaming, 'Mommy' so when I go run in the room he's, like, hunched over glass. When I lift him up I saw a little bit of blood so I put my hand over it to, like, keep the pressure.”

He was taken to St. Christopher Hospital where he died around 4:46 pm, the spokesperson tells PEOPLE. Velez told Fox that Ortega was struck in the stomach and began bleeding profusely. She described the incident as a “freak accident.”

Velez performed CPR on the boy before taking him to the hospital, and doctors were unable to stabilize him, she told WTXF. On a GoFundMe set up for the family, a friend, Jessica Vega, wrote that Ortega was full of life and wanted to be a firefighter. She added that “No parent should ever have to experience the pain of burying a child.”

Police reportedly told WTXF that the medical examiner believes the death to be accidental. Police are investigating the incident. As for the family, Vega wrote that Ortega's two sisters, ages 2 and five, "can't understand why they don't have a brother anymore."

"He had a whole life ahead of him," Velez told the station. "I would do anything to give my life for my son to be here."