A 10-year-old boy has been hospitalized with a skull fracture after a goalpost toppled onto him while he was playing football with friends in Moscow — the latest in a spate of such accidents.
The boy was trying to prevent a goal when he hit the crossbar and the entire structure collapsed onto him, causing a traumatic brain injury, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported, citing a source in the Investigative Committee.
Moscow police are conducting preliminary checks into the incident, the report said.
Last month, an eight-year-old Muscovite was killed after a goalpost fell on his head, passing away before medics could arrive at the scene.
That incident came just weeks after police opened a criminal investigation into the death of an 11-year-old boy in the Murmansk region who was killed in a similar accident, according to a statement on the Investigative Committee website.
Goalposts weigh dozens of kilograms and can inflict severe damage if they fall on young children.
Rossiiskaya Gazeta quoted police as saying it was hard to regulate the construction of equipment in children's playgrounds as they were often erected by migrant laborers, whose work tended to go unmonitored.