Child Dies After Being Swept Into Sewage System

Warning: This story is really sad. And totally random. It’s about a mother in Bryansk, Russia, who was walking her 18-month-old toddler through her city’s main square on Sunday when the pavement suddenly collapsed out of nowhere. Turns out a ruptured hot-water pipe was the cause. It created a giant hole in the ground, which literally sucked in the mother and child. The woman’s husband a police officer who was on duty in the area at the time managed to pull her out with a rope but, sadly, the baby vanished.

“The woman managed to grab on to the edge of the collapsed pavement, which saved her life,” said a city official. Her child, unfortunately, was thrown from his stroller and fell straight into the sewer below.

On Sunday, search teams found the little boy’s clothing but it wasn’t until today that they discovered his body. His mother, 26-year-old Tatyana Didenko, was reportedly taken to the hospital in shock.

It’s a tragic story and what makes it all the more horrifying is its randomness. I mean, this woman was doing what we all do almost every day; she was taking her child for a walk in his stroller. That’s it. And then this. It is really beyond comprehension and, once again, it makes us feel so vulnerable as parents. It also puts things into perspective: most of us are guilty of, at some point, obsessing over things like feeding our kids organic produce or getting them into the “hottest” preschool. At the end of the day, all that really matters is that they’re healthy and safe. Sometimes it takes a heart-wrenching story like this one to remind us not to take anything for granted when it comes to our children.

(Photo: telegraph.co.uk)