London – A boy of ten was killed in a shopping centre on Monday after he was crushed by a heavy piece of store furniture.
The child died after suffering "serious head injuries" in a Topshop store on the first day of his half-term holidays.
Police said the death was being treated as "unexplained but non-suspicious".
Unconfirmed reports suggest the boy pulled down some kind of barrier, which then crashed onto his head inside the shop in the Oracle shopping centre in Reading. He was pronounced dead in hospital an hour later.
Emergency services arrived at the shopping centre shortly after 4pm to find the boy lying unconscious on the floor and suffering from a "major head trauma". He was treated at the scene, before being taken to the nearby Royal Berkshire Hospital. On Monday night it was not yet known whether the schoolboy lived locally or was visiting the shopping centre with his family.
The death is likely to be referred to the Health and Safety Executive for a full investigation and a coroner’s report is expected to be prepared.
In a similar accident in 2013, four-year-old Austen Harrison died after an 18-stone mirror fell on him in the Hugo Boss store at the Bicester Village designer outlet, Oxfordshire. The retailer was later fined £1.2 million (about R19 million) after being prosecuted for health and safety offences.
On Monday night a Thames Valley Police spokesman said: "We were called by the South Central Ambulance Service at around 4.15pm this afternoon to a retail store at the Oracle shopping centre.
"They found that a ten-year-old boy had suffered serious head injuries after an incident involving store furniture.
"The boy was taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital where sadly he was pronounced dead... At this time the death is being treated as unexplained but non-suspicious and police are making further inquiries." Staff at Topshop declined to comment.