BABY BOY DIES AFTER SWALLOWING PART OF BALLOON AT HALLOWEEN PARTY

Don'Vyaire Avita-Mays died after biting a balloon animal at a Halloween gathering in Kenosha, Wisconsin, two days before his first birthday. The balloon's knotted latex lodged in his throat on 24 October, his mother Kisha Avita-Wilson said. She said she pulled him from his car seat, began CPR and tried to clear the obstruction with her fingers while another person at the gathering did the same. Don turned blue and went into cardiac arrest, she said. Paramedics used a tube and pliers in an attempt to remove the blockage after an ambulance arrived. He died on 26 October, the day he had been due to turn one.

Avita-Wilson told NBC Chicago that relatives had kept balloons away from her son, known to the family as baby Don, but one came loose and he grabbed it. "He grabbed it, and he bit it and when he bit it, it shot the tied-up part into the bottom of his esophagus," she said. "It was nothing that we could have done to save my baby boy." A fundraising page for funeral costs describes him as "a handsome little boy whose laugh was infectious." Her aunt, who described herself as Don's adoptive mother, wrote online that the stress has left Avita-Wilson affected "physically, mentally, and emotionally."

The fundraising page states that Avita-Wilson, who is seven months pregnant, has been hospitalised due to stress and has had contractions ahead of a January due date. Avita-Wilson is calling for balloons to be withdrawn from sale because of the risk to children. "Balloons have warnings on them, but that is not enough," she said. "They should stop selling them. Stop marketing them to kids. Stop producing them."