A three-year-old girl was strangled to death by a curtain cord in a freak accident at her Dublin home, an inquest heard yesterday.
Maria Keane, the devastated mother of Cara, said she discovered the child standing with the cord wrapped around her neck in the sitting room of their house at Woodlands, Portmarnock in Co Dublin.
"I went into the sitting room to check on Cara and I saw her close to the curtain in a standing position, she appeared to be asleep. The cord was around her neck," Ms Keane said. "When I released the cord from around her neck there was a gush of air from her. It appeared to have been trapped."
Ms Keane said her daughter had been watching television with her twin brother just before the accident on November 8th, 2004.
The mother said the three-year-old boy had just followed her upstairs where she was cleaning bedrooms.
The Dublin City Coroner's Court heard that when Ms Keane went downstairs Cara had one of the strings used to open and close the curtains wrapped around her neck.
The girl was later pronounced dead in Temple Street Children's Hospital and the postmortem revealed she had asphyxiated due to compression of the neck.
The coroner, Dr Brian Farrell, who passed a verdict of accidental death, said he would be contacting the relevant safety and standard authorities to ensure the dangers of curtain cords around young children are highlighted.