Review panel seeks data to prevent deaths

No death is as grim as that of a child.

All those visions of a happy and productive life and all of that life's potential are gone. Grieving parents are left behind to wonder how their hopes and expectations were reversed, leaving them to outlive their babies instead of the other way around.

When that happens in Cape Girardeau County, there is a group of 21 men and women, experts in their fields, who help a family take one of the first steps toward recovery: answering why the death occurred.

When that group met most recently, it was the McGill family asking why. Daughter Kaelyn, 8, died Feb. 3 when the family was on its way to a Super Bowl party. Kaelyn was gone in an instant as the result of a traffic accident. Now the Child Fatality Review Panel has decided that careless driving may have been involved.

Of course, that charge has yet to be reviewed in a court of law. But now James and Sheila McGill of Cape Girardeau have some answers about their daughter's death. Kaelyn wasn't the victim of a drunk driver, as some speculated. She wasn't the victim of a faulty car part.

The Child Fatality Review Panel investigates unexplained deaths of all victims under age 18. The group meets several times a year as necessary, and members are required by state law to thoroughly investigate cases that come before them.

Those members are law enforcement officers, the coroner and his assistant, medical experts and other experts who work with children. Their task is a serious one, requiring the review of unpleasant photos and documents in a quest for the truth.

But it also is a vital one, as illustrated when the latest findings of 115 such panels from each county in Missouri and the city of St. Louis were released last week.

The most recent numbers are from 2000, when 1,213 children age 17 and younger died in Missouri. The primary reason: car accidents. After that, in order, were suffocation or strangulation, firearms, fires or burns, drowning, general inflicted injuries, shaking, poisoning, falling and electrocution.

It's grim, but it illustrates how fragile children are. More importantly, it allows people in a position to do something about it to track trends in child deaths and address problems.

Cape Girardeau County added 10 children to the 2000 total. Certainly, our goal should be zero. That would mean no more parents facing life after the tragic death of their children.