Mother warns others after sharp stick found poking into Council Bluffs slide

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - For those who take their children to our local parks, it may be in your best interest to check the equipment before letting your children use it.

A mom in Council Bluffs posted on Facebook over the weekend about finding a clear danger caused by vandals at Cochren Park.

Her post says it looked as though a hole had been burned into the slide, and then a sharp stick was placed facing straight up, causing a clear danger to the next person to use it.

“Any time safety of our equipment or facilities is compromised by vandalism, we get concerned by it, and fortunately to this date, we’ve been able to mitigate that either with the publics help or our folks noticing things out in the field,” says Council Bluffs Parks and Recreation Director Vincent Martorello.

Thankfully, no one was injured, and park employees were patching up the hole Monday afternoon.

Martorello says these types of incidents are rare.

“We have our playgrounds vandalized with simple carving of initials into the plastic play structures or graffitiing but we haven’t had a structure defaced like this where it could cause injury,” he says.

The mother says she’s thankful she checked the equipment before letting her kids use it and she encourages others to do the same. So does Martorello.

“Our folks are out there weekly and do visual inspections as much as they can, and a lot of things can happen between the time our folks have visited a park as opposed to when a family shows up, so I think it’s just a good practice that parents or users of playgrounds just do a quick walk around, make sure everything looks okay to you and if it doesn’t, report it to the Parks and Recreation Department,” he says. “We respond pretty quickly and almost immediately when there’s a safety concern.”

Copyright 2021 WOWT. All rights reserved.