With Sister Watching, Girl, 5, Fatally Crushed When Dresser Tips Over

Five-year-old Glenda Arevalo was safely curled up in her bedroom with sister Lissette on Tuesday evening, watching "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" on the Disney Channel when Glenda hopped up to turn up the volume. Suddenly, 8-year-old Lissette screamed.

A dresser holding the television had tipped over and crushed Glenda.

Gricia Estela Arevalo heard Lissette's screams and ran into the bedroom. Glenda died in her arms. She was pronounced dead officially a short time later at Inova Fairfax Hospital.

"Oh, my baby," Arevalo, 38, said yesterday, as she sat in the living room of her home in the Falls Church area of Fairfax County, surrounded by her three children and other family members. Wiping tears, she held up a small, laminated spelling book Glenda had made in her kindergarten class at Westlawn Elementary School, which has a photo of Glenda on its cover. In the picture, Glenda, her hair in pigtails, is grinning.

Officer Camille Neville, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman, said that the county investigated the death and determined that it was an accident. It should serve as a reminder to parents, she said, to childproof their homes and take such precautionary measures as bracketing heavy furniture to walls.

Officials from Glenda's school sent letters to parents telling them of her death and alerting them that counseling would be available for classmates.

The nonprofit Home Safety Council, which works to prevent home-related injuries, estimates that about 2,096 children younger than 15 die each year as a result of injuries at home. The group lists the leading causes of unintentional home-injury deaths as burns from fires, choking and suffocation, drowning, gunshot wounds and poisoning.

In 2005, the most recent year for which such statistics are available, 4,005 deaths resulted from intentional and unintentional injuries of adults and children in Virginia, said Lucy Caldwell, a state health department spokeswoman. Deaths from injuries accounted for 40 percent of the deaths of children 1 to 9 years old and for half of the children between 10 and 14, the state said.

Arevalo, a stay-at-home mother, said in Spanish that she had immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in 1990. Her husband, Jose, is a supervisor at a Red Hot & Blue restaurant.

Glenda's brother Marvin, 10, recalled through tears that his sister loved the bilingual cartoon character Dora the Explorer, "because she spoke two languages, just like her. And she liked to explore, like Dora. She liked the color purple and riding her bike and going to the park with her family."