A stroller that may have saved the life of a 7-month-old buried in a Manhattan building collapse will be studied to determine how its design protected the girl, its Colorado distributor said Monday.
Alan Jurysta, president of Fort Collins-based Sycamore Kids Inc. and sole U.S. distributor of Mountain Buggy Strollers, said the child’s parents have agreed to return their Urban Double model so its New Zealand-based maker, Tritec Manufacturing, can study it.
Jurysta sent the parents, Steven and Heidi Lurensky, a new stroller Monday.
Tiny Abigail Lurensky was buried in debris Thursday when the wall of a supermarket that was being demolished tumbled onto the Manhattan sidewalk.
Abigail might have died if not for the protection provided by her stroller, paramedics told reporters. It collapsed in on itself, cradling the child like a cocoon.
Jurysta said he heard about the accident when a New York Post reporter called him shortly after it happened.
“I didn’t believe it,” he said. “I thought someone was putting me on.”
Since then he has gotten calls from about 30 media outlets.
The stroller’s triangular metal frame could have distributed the shock of the collapse in a way that helped protect the child from the tumble of concrete and brick, Jurysta said.
But whether or not it saved her, she is remarkably lucky, he said. “It is just amazing that everything was just aligned properly and it wasn’t that child’s time to go.”
Ironically, on the day of the collapse, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that Sycamore would recall 2,200 strollers that are similar but one year newer.
Sycamore voluntarily agreed to recall the strollers several weeks ago after 10 reports of handlebars either cracking or breaking, said Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the federal safety agency. The company has agreed to replace the handlebars.
The commission has no interest in examining the stroller that was buried, Wolfson said. “We are focused on defects.”
Jurysta became interested in safe baby products after his then 6-month-old daughter fell through a crib. He was working as a software consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers when he discovered the Mountain Buggy on a trip to New Zealand.
“They were trying to get into the U.S. market, and we solved that problem for them,” Jurysta said. He formed privately held Sycamore five years ago.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
