A 12-year-old Brooklyn boy today was crushed to death by a parking-lot gate as he played a game of “chicken” with pals.
Witnesses said young Yakim McDaniels was going up and down on the rolling gate — but at one point, instead of jumping off as it rose again, he hung on until his head got caught between it and its metal frame 20 feet above the ground.
“A couple of his friends came running by and told me he was stuck,” said Yakim’s stricken mother, Doris Chase. “When I got here, he [was] rolled up in the fence. He already looked dead.”
Neighbors said Yakim and four other restless boys were at the Lott Avenue parking facility playing a challenge game.
Under the rules, the players would hitch a ride on the gate as it goes up, then they jump off. The jump gets more difficult as the gate rises. The last one to jump off wins .
Witnesses said Yakim hung on too long and appeared afraid to jump from the high height. The gate kept moving upward — until it stopped with Yakim’s head got caught in the wedge opening 20 feet above the sidewalk and his feet dangled below.
“He got scared,” said neighbor Sean Spencer, 32. “He was too high. He couldn’t jump.”
Spencer said the boy was dangling for nearly 20 minutes while the gate was still on, until firefighters were able to disable the mechanism, cut through the metal and get him down.
He was rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“My son yelled, ‘Daddy, look at the boy. he’s stuck!’ ” said Spencer, who lives across the street. “So I ran out. He was like rolled up at the top and he was shaking, like convulsing. He did that for 5 or 10 minutes and just stopped.
“We were yelling, ‘Can you say something? Are you all right?’ But he wasn’t saying nothing, just shaking. Then he stopped all of a sudden. You could tell.
“So they brought the saws in and cut the cover off and then cut through the gate. The boy’s arms were above his head, wrapped up in the fence. His neck was cocked to one side. No blood but no expression. He just looked lifeless hanging there.”
Chase, surrounded by several of her other children, said she wondered why it took so long for rescuers to free her oldest son.
“The cops could have saved him,” she said.
City councilman Charles Barron said the death underlined the need for recreational facilities in East New York.
He said the apartment complex should have provided a place for children to play.
“We have met with them on several occasions to talk about how the children don’t have a decent place to play,” Barron said.
“They told us they didn’t want to be responsible for a recreation area. They are responsible for this death. We want these g-ddamn gates taken down now. if they don’t take them down, we’re going to pull them down.”
A representative for the building’s owner could not be reached for comment.