Hoping For A Miracle: Toddler Hurt At Carnival

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A 15-month-old toddler wasn’t big enough to join her mother and sister in the bouncy house at the carnival next to Towne West on Friday night.

So to pass the time while waiting for them, she decided to swing back and forth on a wire in front of the bouncy house while her father shot a video.

“She was swinging back and forth, and all of a sudden she was going straight back with her eyes wide open,” Lynn Bartonek said of her granddaughter, whose name is being withheld by her family for now.

“My son told me, ‘Mom, I had to pry her hands off the hand rail,’ ” Bartonek said.

The parents flagged down off-duty police officers nearby, who called 911. The first responders worked on her for about an hour, trying to revive her, before taken to a hospital.

The little girl had still not regained consciousness, Bartonek said, and the family is hoping for a miracle.

“There was a possibility of some type of electric shock,” Officer Charley Davidson said Saturday afternoon. “We’re still trying to determine whether that is the cause.”

When police went to the hospital and told doctors they suspected the girl had been shocked, they checked her body and found burn marks on her feet, Bartonek said.

Bartonek said the inflatable bouncy house where the little girl was critically injured was back up and running Saturday night.

“It just appalled me to see that,” she added.

The carnival was operated by Evans United Shows. Company officials did not release a statement on Saturday.

“A fun evening turned into a lot of pain,” Bartonek said.