It was lunchtime when 2 1 /2-year-old Fletcher Hartz opened the door to the elevator at his grandparents’ home in Little Rock. His mother, Nicole Hartz, stood a few feet away in the kitchen making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She didn’t see him walk into the hallway and pull open the elevator door, which looked like an ordinary closet door. But she heard him cry.

She thought Fletcher, a curious little boy with thick brown hair, was upset because he couldn’t reach a light switch. She went to check on him and found Fletcher trapped behind the door to the elevator, which her in-laws had installed a few years earlier to accommodate their own elderly parents at the two-story home.

Nicole yanked on the door. It was locked, automatically secured by a safety device after being closed. But she could pull it open a crack. She could see Fletcher was caught in the narrow gap behind the outer door and just in front of an accordion door that closed off the elevator car, a no man’s land where the floor ended and the edge of the elevator car began. The space was only a few inches wide, just enough for his tiny body.

About the Author: James Swartz
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Mr. Swartz, our Managing and Principal Attorney at Swartz & Swartz P.C., is a nationally recognized and respected trial attorney as well as consumer advocate. His practice focuses on cases involving negligence, torts, products liability, medical malpractice, wrongful death, and other claims involving catastrophic injuries.

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