Oklahoma 2-Year-Old Dies After Swallowing Small Battery

Family issues warning for Christmas

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A 2-year-old Oklahoma girl died after ingesting a small button battery around Christmas Day, 2015.

An X-ray showed that the girl, Brianna Florer, swallowed the silver-colored battery, according to local reports and the girl’s grandfather.

“On Saturday she was fine,” said grandfather Kent Vice, according to a GoFundMe page. “It was a perfect Christmas,” he added.

Brianna celebrated Christmas with her family and got new toys as gifts. The New York Daily News reported that she opened gifts at her grandparents’ house one day after Christmas but had a fever.

However, when the girl began throwing up blood and turned blue, her parents, Brian and Stephanie Florer, called an ambulance.

“She threw up again,” Vice added. “It was a massive amount of blood, and they rushed her to the Grove hospital.”

When doctors realized what happened, Brianna was sent to another facility for emergency surgery, reports said.

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However, it was too late.

“They operated on her for 2½ hours, but they couldn’t stop the bleeding,” Vice told Tulsa World. “They believed the battery (acid) ate through to her carotid artery by way of her esophagus. ... We had no idea when she swallowed it .”

“One minute she is perfect, and the next minute she is dead,” Vice said. “We had no idea when she swallowed it (the battery).”

Vice said that after his granddaughter’s death, he wants to raise awareness about button batteries.

“I want to keep these things out of houses,” he said. “They are dangerous.”

There were some 53 deaths caused by swallowing button batteries in all of 2015, according to the Oklahoma poison control center.

So far, $9,800 out of $10,000 had been raised for the girl’s family on GoFundMe.