Mother Lifts Stroller While Shopping, Baby Falls, Parents Demand Compensation From Market

A baby in a cart in a supermarket in China in this file photo. STR/AFP/Getty Images

A family demanded compensation from a shopping center after their child slipped out of its stroller while the mother attempted to move it past a barricade, according to Chinese online news outlet Pear Videos.

The child suffered a concussion and a broken collar bone, and was released several days after the fall which occurred on July 5, according to the Aug. 20 report.

The shopping center in Xiaogan City of China’s Hubei Province offered to pay for medical fees for the child, but the parents asked for more.

Impasse

Video footage inside of the market shows an escalator and a set of thinly placed metal bars. The bars are used to stop people from walking out of the store with shopping carts. However, the baby stroller was too wide to pass through.

An employee at the market helped the mother to lift the stroller over the bars. However, just as the stroller passed over and was to be set down, the child slipped out and appeared to have landed face first on the tile floor.

The mother immediately scoops up the child, but the damage had been done.

The baby was admitted to the hospital later that day, and diagnosed with a concussion and broken collar bone. On July 11, the baby was released from the hospital, according to forms shown to Pear Videos.

The child’s father, surnamed Tan, told Pear Videos that the hospital fees cost him about 3,000 yuan ($425). He said there were other costs, including legal expenses to determine the injuries, which were 1,000 yuan ($140). Further expenses for follow-up medical visits cost the family a grand total of 6,000 yuan ($850).

“They (the market) said the child is still breastfeeding, so there won’t be compensation,” Tan told Pear Videos. “They said that the child is so young, and so there should be someone to look after it.”

“But they didn’t give money for that either.”

An unnamed employee at the market told Pear Videos that the child wasn’t safely secured in the stroller. “There is a belt in the center of the stroller, that’s to hold the child in, but [it] wasn’t being worn.”

The employee further said that the shopping center was unwilling to pay for fees that would include private nurses to help look after the child.

The shopping center offered to cover the medical expenses, but the report did not clarify if any compensation had been paid.