A 16-year-old girl was killed in a sledding accident in upstate New York on Saturday that also injured a toddler, according to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office.
The teenager was sledding with a 3-year-old boy in Lewiston “when they struck a tree at the bottom of the hill,” the office said in a release.
The two children were then taken to John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, where the girl was pronounced dead, according to the office.
The park where they were sledding, Clyde L. Burmaster Park, has been closed, and the case remains under investigation, the sheriff’s office said.
From 2008 through 2017, 220,488 patients were treated in U.S. emergency departments for injuries related to sledding, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Nearly 70 percent of these patients were children age 19 years and younger.