I-Team Extras: Dangerous Displays
May 23, 2008 6:53 pm US/Eastern
Dangerous Displays: Not Just Child's Play
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Reports of more injuries have led to a vow to take action. This time the injuries have happened to adults. It all happened after a CBS4 I-Team investigation into dangerous display hooks that are located in retail stores around the country.
CBS4 I-Team reporter Stephen Stock discovered that despite common misperceptions of wild children in stores who hurt themselves, these seemingly innocent display hooks pose not only a danger to children, but to adults as well.
Five-year-old Elisiana Terracciano demonstrates a toughness that came into high demand on Valentine's Day three years ago when she was shopping for jeans with her mother.
"I was looking at something on the hooks and I lost my balance and fell in," Elisiana Terracciano said.
She fell into display hooks much like the ones in our slide show that accompany this article.
"The hook is like still in her eye. She was on top of it. So I had to literally, like, pull her off," Elisiana's mother, Christiana Terracciano said.
Mom rushed Elisiana to the hospital where she underwent surgery to repair the tear duct in her eye.
The CBS4 I-Team in Miami teamed up with investigative partners at WBBM in Chicago for this probe into dangerous displays.
Our investigation uncovered at least 59 victims who have accidents that involve these long metal display hooks. Display hooks that can be found holding merchandise in just about any store in the country.
The snapshots from some of these cases are enough to make any parent cringe.
After the first story about the dangers of these hooks aired, the CBS4 I-Team received some e-mails complaining that parents needed to keep better watch over their children.
"Well, it's just an accident waiting to happen," said Brian Parpan of Illinois. He wants to clear up the misconception that it's only children who are being harmed by these hooks.
"It hurt a lot," Parpan said.
Parpan is 50-years-old. He is also a victim of a display hook that he impaled himself on while shopping at a hardware store near his hometown of Antioch, Illinois.
"Well when I reached for the item, the peg actually stopped me in my tracks. It stopped my forward motion. It just. It's hard to talk about because it was very painful," Parpan said while becoming very emotional.
That was three years ago. "My whole eye was cut on the bottom," Parpan said while showing the scar under his right eye.
Despite several surgeries, he's still dealing with pain and discomfort from his encounter with the hook.
"I have a lot of side effects from it, bad night vision, my eye gets real tired real quick, so you know dry eye, constant headache all the time," Parpan said.
"Some of the hooks protrude straight out so that the child may run into it..." Dr. Craig McKeown of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute said.
The University of Miami's Doctor Craig McKeown, a leading pediatric eye surgeon, says the problem is depth perception. And therefore, Dr. McKeown said, the danger presented by these types of hooks is not limited to children, but the danger can affect adults as well.
"When you see an object head on as I'm doing here with a pencil our sense of depth perception may or may not be accurate," Dr. McKeown told the CBS4 I-Team.
And these hooks, which the CBS4 I-Team and our investigative partners found in more than 100 different stores in South Florida and across the country, can do more than just cause ugly scars.
"In some instances the injury is so severe that we can't save the eye and the eye is lost and permanently blinded," Dr. McKeown said.
Replacing the straight, problematic hooks costs just a couple of cents for each hook. But with tens of thousands of hooks, that can add up and many stores seem unwilling to make the change.
"They are very dangerous, "display hook victim Brian Parpan said. Parpan hopes this exposure in the media to this problem changes that mindset.
"After I realized what happened to me I was just amazed that this doesn't happen to a lot of people," Parpan said.
Elisiana Terracciano hopes changes come too.
"I think that the stores need to change the hooks really badly because a lot of people hurt their eye," Terracciano said.
After our investigation representatives from several retail chains --including Toys "R" Us, Disney and Best Buy-- said they are reviewing their policies regarding these hooks and will take action to replace them no matter what the cost.
In Illinois, after our investigative partners in Chicago aired reports there, a state lawmaker has moved to draft legislation to ban these types of hooks.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
I-Team Extras: Dangerous Displays
