If you’re in the market for a new home and planning on bringing your kids along to house showings, one Utah realtor would like a word.
Karina VanOrman, who runs the TikTok channel @karinasutahhomes, recommends that parents avoid bringing young kids to home showings. The reason? VanOrman was witness to the six-year-old daughter of her clients being life-flighted to a hospital from an injury she got while her parents toured a potential new home.
The realtor told the story on her TikTok, explaining that while showing homes to a couple who often brought their young, very active children to showings, VanOrman watched in horror as one of the kids ran full force into a glass door.
“I could see that she did not realize that the sliding glass door was closed,” VanOrman described in a TikTok video. “So as she was running full speed ahead, I yelled, ‘Stop!’ But before she could stop herself, she ran straight through that glass door.”
Because the door was made of full glass from the 1970s, it didn’t fracture into tiny pieces, like many newer glass structures do (they are designed that way for safety), but instead, it fragmented into huge, jagged shards of glass.
The girl had been cut from the glass on her upper body and her head, but most terrifying, VanOrman looked down to see a giant piece of glass sticking directly out of the girl’s abdomen.
Although the realtor immediately instructed the girl not to pull the glass out, the girl panicked, reached down, and yanked it out of her body.
“She looked down in total panic, and she grabbed it with both hands and pulled it out and cut her hands,” VanOrman remembers.
The girl was bleeding profusely from her head, abdomen, and as a result of pulling the glass out of her stomach, from her hands as well.
Unfortunately, because the house was under construction and no one was living in it at the time, VanOrman explained that there was absolutely nothing inside to help staunch the bleeding.
“It was empty, so I didn’t have a blanket or towels or something that I could help with,” she said.
The realtor instead ran to her own car and found a blanket, which she brought back inside to use to apply pressure to the abdominal wound. The parent had not witnessed the incident, so VanOrman also had to try to explain to them that the girl had been severely cut by the glass shard that was wedged inside her abdomen. She explained that because she had first responder courses in college, she knew the risk of internal bleeding and other injuries was high.
“I immediately knew that that was that was a big deal,” VanOrman noted.
The adults were able to call 911, and fortunately, an ambulance arrived very quickly, rushing the girl and her father to the hospital.
VanOrman stayed back, making sure the mother felt safe to drive and even offering to drive the other two young children to safety for her. The realtor found the other two children, who were huddled in a closet together, and drove them to their grandmother’s house.
Meanwhile, the girl was air-flighted to a children's hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Fortunately, after being further assessed by medical staff, it was determined that the six-year-old girl had gotten very lucky. The glass had missed all of the dangerous arteries, blood vessels, and structures that could have caused serious complications had they been cut.
The glass had gone into her intestines, but she was able to go home after a couple of weeks in the hospital and made a full recovery at home.
While the story had a happy ending, it was still such a horrifying and traumatic experience that Vanorman shared it as both a warning to parents looking at homes to buy and real estate agents who may be showing houses to young children.
She pointed out that neither party knows exactly what is inside a home that could be unsafe or safe, and that whenever possible, it’s best to avoid bringing young children, especially to a showing where they could get hurt.
Today, VanOrman strongly recommends that young kids don’t accompany their parents to home showings, and if the parents deem it necessary to bring them, she insists on a strict “stay-together” policy for the duration of the showing.
“My rule is is they have to stay with us at all times,” she says. “There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. We have to have them even hold our hands through the entire house, because safety is so important. And it was a hard lesson that I learned.”
