A two-year-old boy died of strangulation after his neck was entangled in a curtain tie-back at his home in Meru Raya, Ipoh, on Tuesday afternoon.
In the 2.30pm incident, the boy was at home with his stepmother.
He was playing with a curtain tie-back at the doorway to the staircase leading to the kitchen, according to Ipoh police chief ACP Mohd Ali Tamby.
“The boy had asked for some food and was given biscuit before he left to play at the living room while the stepmother went to the kitchen to cook.
“She then felt uneasy as it was too quiet so she went to check on the boy and found him hanging from the curtain tie-back,” he said.
Mohd Ali said the housewife in her 30s then untangled the tie-back from the boy’s neck and laid him on the floor.
“He was already unconscious. The stepmother called the boy’s father and her sister who lives nearby.
“She also contacted 999 and was instructed to perform CPR while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
“The stepmother and her sister tried and felt a pulse while milk was also coming out from his mouth,” he said.
Both sisters conducted the CPR until the ambulance arrived at about 3pm.
“The medical team then took over to perform the CPR on the boy and rushed him to the Raja Permaisuri Bainun Hospital where he was declared dead,” Mohd Ali said.
He revealed that the victim’s father, aged 33, is a Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia lecturer and he married the stepmother in October last year.
He added that the boy’s biological mother passed away in February last year due to breast cancer.
The boy’s elder sister, aged five, was attending kindergarten not far from the house at the time.
Mohd Ali said the post-mortem found the child’s death to be due to compression of the neck consistent with hanging.
The case has been classified as sudden death.