Boy, 7, Crushed by Utility Cart While Playing at School

A 7-year-old boy was crushed to death by an electric utility cart at Roscoe Elementary School in Sun Valley on Friday, an accident that police said was triggered by schoolyard horseplay on the unmanned cart.

A group of children were playing on or near the cart about 3 p.m. when it started to roll down a slight incline, said Capt. Greg Meyer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic division.

The boy, identified by school officials as second-grader Steve Silva, jumped in front of the cart in an apparent attempt to stop it and was pinned against a wall.

The child suffered massive head trauma and was in full cardiac arrest when paramedics arrived, authorities said.

He was pronounced dead at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

Roy Romer, the Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, arrived at the shell-shocked campus Friday evening.

“Our concern right now is what can we do to help the family, what can we do to help this community deal with the grief, and third, how can we prevent this from happening?” said Romer, the former governor of Colorado.

Romer said he spoke briefly to the boy’s father to express his condolences.

Principal Mary Kurzeka, looking distraught, said that crisis counselors would be at the school Monday to help students and teachers cope with the death.

Classes at the 1,200-student campus had been dismissed early, at about 1:40 p.m., and the accident happened when the schoolyard was filled with children playing in an after-school program, school officials said.

Teachers were supervising the yard at the time, said Stephanie Brady, a district spokeswoman.

Several children milling around the low-slung brick building at 10765 Strathern St. later said that the utility cart, used for school maintenance, was often parked on the asphalt playground.

“It’s always out there,” said Angie Carranza, a fifth-grader.

“We chase it around when it’s moving,” added Roberto Julio, a sixth-grader at Sun Valley Middle School who attended the elementary school last spring.

Police said they were focusing on what caused the vehicle, whose motor appeared to be turned off, to start rolling.

“I don’t know if whether the cart should have been there is going to be an issue for us,” Meyer said.

“How the cart started moving is the big issue,” he said.

Meyer said police were not sure whether the victim had been inside the cart before he ran into its path.

Members of the boy’s family gathered at the hospital Friday night, but declined to comment.

District officials offered no comment to questions about the placement of the cart on a bustling schoolyard and referred questions to police.

“This is just a really tragic thing,” Romer said. “There’s no way to generalize on safety issues with this.”

*

Fausset is a correspondent and Fox is a Times staff writer.