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11-year-old boy playing on roof falls to death

32 Comments

A young boy playing on the roof of his Kobe apartment building apparently fell to his death through a skylight on Sunday afternoon, police said Monday.

Emergency services received a call from another resident at around 2 p.m., saying that a boy had fallen from the roof of the 7-floor apartment block. According to the police report, emergency services rushed to the scene but the boy, who has been identified as Shuto Hayashi, 11, was already dead when they arrived.

Police said Hayashi was playing on the roof with two friends when they heard the sound of breaking glass and realized Hayashi had fallen. The door to the roof was locked but the three boys apparently found another point of access, police said.

© News reports

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32 Comments
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...And the parents were where exactly?

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And where were the parents`s? They were probably caught up in their own things rather than trying to be a responsible parent. So sad!

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Geez, here we go again. This is an 11 year old kid, not a 4 year old. Do the parents have a responsibility to monitor the kids actions 24/7? What were they supposed to think? Where is my kid ... oh wait, maybe he somehow found a way past the locked door to the roof of our apartment and he must be playing on the roof with his friends! This is an unfortunate accident and I hope it leads to the installation of reinforced glass / plastic for skylights. If anyone is to blame it is the construction company.

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11 y/o kids are out playing. That's what they do. Parents can't keep an eye on a 11 y/o all the time. I found plenty of ways of getting in trouble at that age. One can't blame just the construction company either. The kid and his friends got up there somehow (could have been the bldg. mgr) and he got himself killed. Sad story and unfortunate Accident.

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Agree with bicultural on this. Also if an 11-year-old can gain access to the roof, the lock obviously wasn't enough. There needs to be better child-proof barriers on apartment rooftops and better balconies with higher railings and child-proof locks as well. This must be devastating to the parents. My condolences.

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If anyone is to blame it is the construction company.

And the owners of the building. How exactly did they get onto the roof?

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Boys will be boys. No one to blame but the inevitable and occasionally unfortunate consequences of human nature.

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where was the father? where were the parents? where were the building owners?...sounds like people have become a bit japanese,hey? always trying to put the blame on someone else.

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@ bobcatfish and other Japan haters

Short of fitting my 13 year old son with a GPS anklet, I don't know what he is doing most of the time. Especially on weekends. Even if I did know exactly where he was, I don't know what he, or his friends, are doing. They were practicing choking each other a couple of months back, at a park just a couplwe of doors down. Yeah, he got told off big time. Still managed to come home with a broken arm once before though.

That said, he is of a legal age in Autralia to leave at home by himself. And we would, without hesitation. That is because, 99% of the time, he is not doing something dangerous. Does not stop him from doing something that will be extremely expensive when we get the bill...

And we leave him in charge of his 3 year old brother, for short amounts of time. My wife and I know the older boy will turn on the computer as soon as we leave and play games, while the younger one amuses himself - either playing with his toys, drawing on the bed with my wife's lipstick or trying to kill the cat. Speaking of whom, we don't know where the 3 year old is a lot of the time, because we simply watch him every second of the day. We do our best but we are not robots. We don't leave him in front of the TV all day either.

So, we rarely watch the 13 year old, watch the 3 year old some of the time, and the cat also some of the time. They all get up to michief - even when we are watching.

I remember coming from home from school, not in Japan, with a broken arm myself. Where were the teachers? Shock, horror, they were eating lunch, probably trying to de-stress after teaching us little monsters.

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My son is 10 now and he heads out with friends to play and race around on their bicycles. Most of the time I got a fair idea of where he hangs out and what he is up to, but wouldn't be surprised if he comes home with a broken arm, etc.

Heck, when I was his age we climbed trees, shot at each other with spud-guns, raced our Bikes down steep inclines, etc.

So I fully agree with reformedbasher.

Most kids while being unsupervised won't do stupid stuff.

There is a good program on NTV "Hajimete no Outsukai", where small kids are being given a task(buying stuff, etc) and the camera follows them. Usually great fun to watch all the drama. Same way I can leave the house for hours and let him be alone knowing he will feed himself and not do stupid stuff.

Kids are kids and they are good at getting into places and situations they shouldn't be in.

Heck, I fondly recall a certain closed down factory for old steam-trains(naturally of limits, etc), Yet we still explored it and played in it But if our parents found out about it .......

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Post got mixed up on edit. Gomen Ne.

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My son, 12, recently cracked bis arm on a bike. He wanted to try if he could go up and down the stairs in the park. Pretty stupid, right? Well, this is how they gain experience - by doing things rather than listening about "how dangerous riding a bike is." In this case, there was a tragic accident, but it was only this boys fault. Well, hold it here - he thought that the "reinforced" glass was actually reinforced and would hold his weight. Pretty natural assumption. So, he was basing his activities based on what he knew. Kinda like us, adults, too - presume that things will work as they should.

If you want to blame the parents of this kid or the kid himself, who would be to blame for all the car and other accidents that adults get into? This was an accident, with tragic end, but nothing more than an accident. My condolences to the parents, and my prayers that my son will not get on the news in the way this boy did.

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bicultural: "Geez, here we go again. This is an 11 year old kid, not a 4 year old."

For a change I agree with you 100%. I think the reaction by some posters, who are just trying to find someone to lay the blame on, is natural, but these kids were just being kids, and accidents happen. This one is happened to be tragic. RIP, little guy.

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He fell 7 stories?

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ah come on "accidents will happen"!

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there was a tragic accident, but it was only this boys fault.

An accident, yes! The boy's fault, no! How did the boys gain access to the roof of a 7 story building if the door was locked? Could they fly? Someone is negelgent. Yes, boys will be boys, but there is no way they should have been able to gain access to the roof of an apartment block no matter how 'boyish' they were.

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Disillusioned, come on.... Part of the attraction of going up there is that It Is Forbiddddddennnnnn... So of course they are interested. Japanese kids are told plenty of the time that this and that are abunai ... These kids just disregarded it because they haven't experienced a terrible injury, perhaps, so they don't appreciate how big the risks can be...

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When I was an 11 year old, doors,locks were no barrier, just an invitation to something potentially interesting. It is a wonder that some us survive childhood at all! RIP little guy you were one of the unlucky ones.

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There was a very similar accident at a school a while back, kid fell through the skylight and died. So this is not a one-off. I'm guessing plastic or reinforced glass is not used either in order to save on construction costs or for aesthetics.

Would be interesting to know how many of these skylight accidents have happened over the years.

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I have to wonder if some people have entirely forgotten their childhoods- since when do parents watch 11-year-olds every waking moment? At 11 (and also much younger), we (boys and girls) were climbing huge trees, playing in the creek down the back of our house, poking beehives with sticks etc, all gasp without parental supervision. A locked gate was quite often an invitation to squeeze through the bars or climb over.

11-year-old boys (and sometimes girls) are masters of this kind of thing- unfortunately occasionally it leads to a tragic accident. I could have fallen out of one of the 80 foot trees we used to climb just as easily as this kid fell through the skylight.

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saborichan - No! You come on! Are you saying that access to the rooftop is OK? I've lived in quite a few mansions in Japan and getting onto the roof was impossible without going through a locked security door or using a 3m ladder to get to a locked manhole. Something is definitely wrong if this group of 11y/o boys were able to get onto the roof regardless of how 'boyish' there were.

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He jumped on the skylight. It should seem pretty obvious to an 11 year old that jumping on a skylight is dangerous but perhaps he has grown up in an atmosphere with a mother telling him what things are dangerous. With somebody saying "abunai, abunai" he never developed any skill at being able to think for himself.

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I fell threw 7 years old (broke the ceiling )the roof of my father's apartment building but I hanged on to the ledge and pulled myself up. !!!! My friends were in shock that i didn't completely fall through the livingroom of the rented apartment my father owned. Plus I used to jump from rooftop to rooftop. Seriously, I was like spiderman !!!! Around my neighborhood kids called me, " Stuntman " My friends dared me to jump several times from a roof to an inground pool. I jumped from rooftops onto grass and I was lucky !!!!

Im sorry for this kid, at least he in his last moments was having fun. Rest in Peace little guy

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Finally nice to see some sensible postings.

RIP to the boy and condolences to his parents.

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it is pretty obvious which posters have children or not, anyone who thinks you can watch a 11yr 24/7 365 (lets not forget leap year so sometimes 366) is a moron.

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"The door to the roof was locked but the three boys apparently found another point of access, police said." This kind of thing has happened every day, for thousands of years. It's pretty much genetic in cats and humans. Accidents happen.

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Also unfortunately when kids become "teeners" they tend to do some crazy things & so hard for parents to keep them in a safe way & yes it is the same to both males & females.

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RIP Hayashi-kun Those skylights should be outlawed. I fell through a skylight when I was 7 yrs old living in Texas. The multipurpose room / cafeteria of the elementary school had a row of skylights. To a young kid, the bubble shaped obscure color skylignts look like trampolines. Thankfully, I landed on an indoor tree and escaped with only a few stitches.

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I changed lots of apartment and i never saw any access to roof top here in japan. I believed there is no access and no need in japan. This story really surprise me, if there is an access, i think the parents should have warn their children like i do to my children of every danger around them. Like here is a big canal flowing near our apartment.

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I climb on the roof of my 5 story mansion, and I am not a kid. It is there so I did it. RIP

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We have a roof and a sky light. We also have kids. Its the same risk as having a pool.

Kids like super-man stunts and parents need to be trained and teach the kids. Nevertheless, these horrible accidents unfortunately occur. RIP.

By the way, banning skylights has to be the stupidest comment. Might as well bann cars, kitchen equipment, bath-tubs, stairs...

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What a horrible, horrible way to die! RIP little one, and may your friends learn from this terrible tragedy so your death will not go in vane.

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