POMPANO BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Igloo Products Corp. is addressing cooler concerns after a boy in Pompano Beach became trapped in one.
Surveillance video captured 5-year-old Nicholas Wanes hiding in an Igloo® 72 qt. Marine Elite, March 2.
For more than a minute, Nicholas was inside the cooler with the top cracked open. But eventually, the top dropped and locked.
“We heard this muffled scream,” said Maria Wanes, Nicholas’ mother. “We came running out, and you can tell where the scream was coming from. Finally, Rob turned and looked to the cooler, opened it up and he was in there.”
7News aired its story about the incident on Thursday. On Saturday, Igloo issued a statement to 7News where the manufacturer confirmed the recall.
Here is the statement in its entirety:
“It has been brought to our attention that a child recently, inadvertently trapped himself inside one of our products. We are very sorry for the scare this incident must have caused the child and his family, and very happy no one was injured. We have contacted the family to express our apologies and communicate the following actions we have already taken:
- We have immediately identified the product in question.
- Our engineering team has determined what could have been the cause of the incident: a performance issue with a latch on the cooler, with the ability to lock, if the user attached their own padlock or similar device.
- We have identified three other products with the same latch, with the potential to encounter the same issue.
- Our sales staff has identified all of the points of distribution of the four total products with the potential to experience a similar issue.
- We have issued a recall statement with the distributors of this product, and published it publicly on our website.
- We have communicated our recall plan with the distributors that have sold these products.
- We have communicated our recall plan internally with our customer service team, so they can take action on behalf of customers that own one of the products.
Igloo stands behind the quality of our products, and because our consumers’ safety and satisfaction are our top priority, we are voluntarily recalling the Igloo® Marine Elite coolers made for boating applications, which have been sold through West Marine stores. This recall concerns only those Igloo® Marine Elite coolers with stainless-steel, ability-to-lock latches sold under the item numbers listed below:
- Igloo® Marine Elite 72 quart; Item #00049375
- Igloo® Marine Elite 54 quart; Item #00049374
- Igloo® Marine Elite 94 quart; Item #00049574
- Igloo® Marine Elite 110 quart; Item #00034108
It is possible that the stainless-steel latch could inadvertently close where a person could potentially become locked inside. We are working closely with West Marine to send customers a free latch-replacement kit that can be used to easily and safely switch out the current latch.
If you are an owner of one of the aforementioned coolers, you can contact us, toll free, at 1(888)-257-0934 to receive your free latch-replacement kit. Once removed, please discard the old stainless-steel latches.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused our customers and fans. Our goal is to do everything we can to get our customers back to enjoying the outdoors while using and loving their Igloo cooler.”
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