Peterborough boy severs part of finger on playground digger

A Peterborough mother is cautioning parents after her son lost the tip of his finger while playing on an apparatus at a city playground on Sunday.

Marina Wilke, along with her four-year-old son, Erik, and her mother, Rita, were at Nicholls Oval when the boy started playing with his favourite apparatus — a steel sandbox digger.

“He was playing with the jigger apparatus with my mother and within seconds she heard him scream,” Wilke told CHEX News. “He pulled his hand away and the whole nailbed and a chunk of the top of his finger had been severed.”

Doctors managed to re-attach the tip of the boy’s finger but he might not have a nail.

Wilke notified the city about the incident. On Monday morning the apparatus had been blocked off by park staff, said Phil Jacobs, of the city’s recreation department.

“I believe we install safe equipment,” he said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I believe we install safe equipment," he said.

“It’s unfortunate that someone has to get injured to have this happen. So I hope the best will come out of this and I feel sorry for the young lad who hurt himself.”

Jacobs says each of the city’s 56 playgrounds is inspected every 30 days, adding Nicholls Oval has the only toy digger.

Wilke says she wants other parents to be extra vigilant of the equipment their children play on.

“Something like this is not what you would expect,” she said. “It’s not a broken bone. It’s not a concussion, it’s a severed finger.”

She shared the incident on Facebook and says some people mocked her son’s predicament.

“Before you write a negative comment or you laugh at a situation like this, you think about the fact that it’s a real child and a real trauma,” she said. “And be more sensitive to that. My son has been through hell and it’s not a laughing matter.”