A 16-year-old girl has been killed and a toddler injured in a sleigh crash in New York State.
The couple was riding in a sleigh tube in a hill in Clyde L. Burmaster Park, formerly Bond Lake Park, in Lewiston when they hit a tree at the bottom of the hill, just after 10am, according to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office.
The 16-year-old was pronounced dead at a Buffalo Children’s Hospital and the three-year-old boy was treated and released, officials said.
Local police and sheriffs closed the sled hill as they investigated the crash.
Sled injuries have declined in recent decades, but more than 220,488 patients went to U.S. emergency rooms for sled injuries between 2008 and 2017, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
According to the organization, children are treated seven times more for sled injuries than adults.