Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

Yesterday afternoon, a branch fell off a tree just outside the seal lion exhibit at the Central Park Zoo in New York.  It was not windy or raining, and no one really knows why it fell.  About thirty feet below, Gianna Ricciutti, aged six months, was having her picture taken by her father, Mike, while being held by her mother, Karla Del Gallo. It was part of a visit from their home in New Jersey.  The branch hit Gianna and her mother, leaving Gianna dead and Karla in critical condition.

This is the sort of story that makes you gasp and exclaim how awful it is.  The sheer randomness of this event, coupled with the death of a tiny child, seems especially horrible.  As we start to think about it, we wonder why it doesn't happen more often.  After all, parks are full of tall trees, and branches fall off trees, so it was just a matter of time, we suppose, before this happened. And if it happened once, it can happen again.

If that's how we feel, imagine what it would be like to be just outside sea lion exhibit at the Central Park Zoo and suddenly hear a loud noise and see a woman and her baby crushed by a falling tree limb.  Gianna's father witnessed his baby's death and his wife's serious injury, completely powerless to stop it.  There were certainly others, perhaps not as focused on that particular pair, who saw the accident or arrived shortly thereafter. 

A security guard at the scene was interviewed by the New York Times.  The Times reports his experience as,

he heard a loud crack, like a thunderclap, and saw the branch plummet. After the mother fell, members of her family shrieked, the guard said, and her husband began screaming and jumping around. “He was going crazy,” the guard said.