May 4, 2009 8:02 pm US/Eastern
NJ Boy, 9, Dies After Being Struck By Baseball
LONG BRANCH, N.J. (CBS) ―
-
-
Aluminum bats are once again the center of controversy in New Jersey after a 9-year-old boy died from being struck by a ball hit off an aluminum bat. (File)
AP
A backyard baseball game turned deadly in what can only be described as a freak accident in Long Branch. A family is mourning the death of their 9-year-old son who was struck and killed by a baseball.
Members of the tight-knit orthodox Jewish community Monday came by to comfort the family of Eliyahu Dabbah, who died Friday after being hit in the neck by a baseball while playing with his brother in their backyard. Dabbah was the son of Rabbi Mordecai, who heads the Yeshiva Keter Torah in Lakewood. The distraught father now has gone to Israel to lay the boy to rest.
The EMS squad that responded to the tragedy told CBS 2 that it was a fluke accident, with the ball striking the boy's vagas nerve, sending him into cardiac arrest. His brother, they say, was using an aluminum bat, the kind of bat that New Jersey State Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan has been trying to ban in organized sports where kids under the age of 18 play.
"An aluminum weight is only 22 ounces and there is a flexing motion in an aluminum bat. They call it the 'trampoline effect'
Steven Damaluski spent six weeks in a coma after being hit in the cheset by a metal-batted ball in a league game. The blow stopped his heart and prevented oxygen from going to his brain. In an exclusive interview with CBS 2 in 2007, his parents said they're on a crusade to stop the use of non-wooden bats.
An organization called "Don't Take My Bat Away" says metal bats are safe and that since Little League baseball has started tracking catastrophic injuries, it has found that "there have been eight pitchers who have died from batted-balls and six of those in games where a wood bat was used."
Diegnan's bill has made it through a committee vote, but it has never been posted for vote in the General Assembly.
Members of the Dabbah family who remained in Long Branch will sit Shiva for seven days at their home.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
2009 Celebrity Deaths
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Reporting
Comments