2-year-old Stoddard County girl dies in farm accident

STODDARD COUNTY, Mo. — A 2-year-old girl was killed in a farming accident west of Bernie on Monday morning.

At about 9:45 a.m., the Stoddard County Sheriff's Department received a call to a Bernie farm on County Road 667, where the child had been run over by a tractor attempting to unload cotton into a module.

According to authorities at the scene, it was commonplace for the child, who would have turned 3 later this month, to accompany her parents to work on the farm. It was reported that she had apparently had hidden in a cotton module tarp and could not be seen by the tractor operator.

The child, whose identity has not been released by the sheriff's department, was taken by helicopter to a Cape Girardeau hospital, where she died of her injuries.