2 yr old dies in ATV crash while Dad was checking text messages

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Text message led to ATV crash that killed Eureka, Mo., toddler

The father of a 2-year-old who died in a weekend ATV crash said he looked down to check a text message while the boy somehow pushed the throttle, prompting the dad to fall off the vehicle before the toddler sustained fatal injuries.

Jackson Moore, 2, of Eureka, was riding on a slow-moving all-terrain vehicle that his father, Nicholas Moore, 29, was driving Saturday through a wooded area of Franklin County.

Moore told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Monday’s edition that he had his son in his lap, and was traveling at a speed that allowed his brother Tony, a paramedic, to walk alongside them. The father said he looked at his cell phone and then tumbled to the ground, apparently when the child hit the throttle before the ATV ran into a tree.

“He was out of sight and I heard the boom,” said Nicholas Moore. “I don’t know how he held on.” The child was not wearing a helmet.

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Nicholas Moore also said his son had fired a .22-caliber rifle for the first time at a friend’s farm earlier in the day.

Moore said he questioned his decision to allow his son on the ATV, and to be distracted by his phone, but he said he had been being careful.

more . . . http://www.kansascity.com/116/story/965155.html