so sad, but avoidable?

[meriad]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-so ... e-33672499

My heart goes out to the parents it really does, but I have to ask - who in their right minds lets a 7 year old child walk home on a walk that apparently takes 40 minutes? Something really just doesn't add up

Poor child - he never even had a chance at life

[cromwell]

It is very sad. Seven years old is too young to be out unsupervised a mile from home, and building sites are very attractive playgrounds for young children but terribly dangerous for them.

[Workingman]

Sad and avoidable. He should have been supervised, but twenty:twenty hindsight is a wonderful thing.

[Kaz]

It is too far I feel for the parents too, but 40 minutes from home?

Poor little boy xxx

[TheOstrich]

A terrible accident, by all accounts, so tragic ... but like all of you, I was a bit startled to read that a 7 year old would be allowed to journey a mile away from his home like that, and (it appears from the reports I've read) unsupervised ....

[Suff]

Me too with a 7 year old. When I was 9 I used to walk that far back home. I was given the bus fare of course but I chose to spend that and walk....

When I was less than 7 I used to play on a building site in Cyprus. I clearly recall walking over the top of the unfinished walls with other boys. But, then again, I'm sure my parents had no idea I was there and I would have been given hell if I had been found out....

[debih]

7 years old seems too young now but years ago it's what we did. It was acceptable then and only the perverts around have made it unacceptable now.

It shouldn't be wrong now. Society is wrong, not kids doing what kids do.

Hopefully he was playing and fell rather than anything truly awful happening to him.

Poor little mite.


Sent from the dark side of the moon

[Workingman]

The post-mortem shows that the lad, Conley, slipped and got trapped in a vertical pipe and was unable to escape. Tragic.

We have not got anything like the full story of who he was with in the park, their ages, or how many of them were there.