KAMLOOPS — It was a tragic accident and a mother’s worst nightmare.
A 21-month-old Kamloops boy was killed nearly two weeks ago when a television set fell on top of him, leaving his mother and three year old sister struggling to come to terms with what happened.
Baby Sean was a bright, loving and happy child. But the laughter that used to fill his family’s home has been replaced with grief.
“It’s really hard to think that people don’t get to be around him anymore, because he had so much love and he was such a sweet boy,” said Sean’s mother Corina Cantin.
On Saturday, September 8, Cantin woke up to a loud thump in the apartment she shared with her two children.
“I ran to the bedroom and I opened the door, and when I walked in I saw the TV — and this was a big box TV, like an RCA old-style TV, and it’s quite heavy — and it was on his head, and I threw it off of him,” she recalled.
Cantin says she immediately called 911 as she watched her son struggle to hold onto life.
While on the phone with dispatch her three year old daughter told her Sean had climbed up to the television.
“I never in a million years thought that TV would fall,” Cantin said. “I weight tested it myself, and I’m a heavier set woman and it didn’t budge. He is a less than 30 pound baby, and he was able to knock it over.”
Sean was rushed to Royal Inland Hospital and then transferred to Vancouver Children’s Hospital. It was there that Cantin found out her son would never be the same.
“It was almost unimaginable,” she said, “because the day before he was playing and jumping and climbing on me and laughing. It was hard to think about that so when they asked me what I wanted to do, every time someone would ask me questions I would just freeze up, I didn’t know what to do.”
The following Monday, Cantin made the difficult decision to take Sean off life support.
Since then support has been pouring in through a GoFundMe page set up by her cousin.
“Everyone wants to help, and I love that everyone wants to help,” Cantin said. “It makes it seem like so many people saw Sean as this little boy who just touched so many people. I feel guilty for the money, because it should be for Sean, and he’s not even here to enjoy it. So if I can do anything with it, it will be towards my daughter’s future.”
Cantin says she wants people to check their homes for hazards, even if they’ve checked a thousand times before.
“Love your kids, hold them close, because in the blink of an eye everything can change.”
