Six-Year-Old Amish Boy Killed By Skid Loader
Just an awful story out of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. An Amish boy lost his life after being hit by the arm of a skid loader, operated by an Amish teenager. From Lancaster Online:
A 6-year-old boy was killed in a Paradise Township farming accident Thursday afternoon, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
Troopers said they responded just after 3:30 p.m. to Cherry Hill Road where the 6-year-old and a 14-year-old were cleaning out a barn with a skid steer machine loader. The 6-year-old left the cabin of the loader just as the teen was lowering the arm, striking the child in the head, according to police.
The 6-year-old was taken to Lancaster General Hospital where he died of his injuries.
Amish children and youth are active in many ways in farm life, taking on tasks and in taking part in the activities and rhythms of the small family farm.
An upshot of that is that a certain number of Amish children are subject to injuries, and are sometimes killed, in farm-related accidents.
That’s what we are seeing here, and I truly hate to hear about this for the family, and in particular the 14-year-old.
It’s likely – though I emphasize, I don’t know for certain – that the teen was a sibling of the boy. Regardless if that is correct or not, I pray that God helps lift the weight of this from his or her heart.
Death Ruled Accidental
In a related story, the incident was ruled an accident Monday by the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office. The six-year-old boy’s name is Andrew James Beiler. The follow-up article adds these details:
Beiler was on the skid loader with a 14-year-old boy as they were cleaning out a barn when he left the machine’s cabin just as the machine’s arm was being lowered, striking him in the head, according to state police.
Belier died of a traumatic head injury, according to the coroner’s office.
Police did not say if anyone would be charged in the death and did not immediately respond to a request for updates on Monday.
According to his obituary, Beiler attended the Old Order Amish Church and is survived by his parents and four sisters.
Lancaster Online notes that this is the second farm-related death of an Amish child this year. In March, an Amish toddler girl died in a farm accident in Paradise Township.
I'm sorry to hear it
I’m very sorry to hear it, and particularly for the teenager involved and the child’s parents and sisters – many prayers.
While working with the Amish to improve farm safety for children might be an excellent idea, I think it’s a distorted perspective to see this sort of accident in isolation, and do as people were in the previous case and saying children should not be allowed to be engaged in such activities. I would personally take the view that the greater risk of accidents is the disadvantage of having children engaged in real life activities rather than fenced almost entirely off into a sort of child-bubble-world in the mainstream parenting manner, and the advantages of being part of adult life for the children are probably considerable as well, just not the sort of thing that reaches the news.
I am not trying to suggest that the child-bubble is wrong or even, in some situations, avoidable (my father was an electrical engineer), just that accepting the unavoidable risk for the benefits should be regarded as a legitimate lifestyle choice as well.
I don't want to put my head in the sand, but...
You have been posting so many more tragic news articles on this sight. Makes me not want to read it. We have enough of it in our world.
Inclined to agree
Yes, I’d be inclined to say that I feel the same as Joanne and am reading the site less – though I do want that taken as feedback rather than as a complaint :-). I never read conventional news for exactly the reason that it’s all just gloom and doom and upsetting stuff (if it actually matters to know something, someone tells you soon enough – and generally has fun doing so… and I’m not serving others by using time and energy getting upset about a lot of horrible things that I can’t do anything about, rather than by doing what it is in my hands to do as well as I can).
I feel there used to be rather more variety, including a lot of things about the exact way the Amish think about odds and ends and a lot more human interest stuff about how they live, but the feed does seem to be very dominated at present with accidents.
On the other hand, especially with the buggy accidents, I do understand the wish to raise awareness of the problems causing the avoidable ones. Perhaps they could have their own page? Or perhaps it might be possible to write a post every month or so on the subject with a brief account of each accident reported in that time? For one thing, that approach would give a more balanced view of the matter, because our attention as readers would also be drawn towards the good side: we’d also hear things like, “Though of course it doesn’t mitigate the suffering for the people who are involved, I’m delighted to tell you this has been a really good month with only one reported accident: let’s hope drivers keep it up,” rather than hearing only the bad side, “There’s been yet another accident in a short time.”
🙂