Surprised no one's mentioned this, but a two-year-old boy in East Moline, Illinois got the scare of his life on Monday. He was playing on the monkey bars when something sliced his thumb. It turns out some animal--and that's about the most diplomatic term I can use--glued straightedge razor blades to nearly every piece of playground equipment.
Two-year-old Madden Jenks was on his dad Jayson’s shoulders during an outing at Millenium Park in East Moline, pretending to be a big boy on the monkey bars, when he was hurt.
“He said, ‘Ouch.’ Jayson put him down. He started bleeding and we looked and they were everywhere. The razor blades were everywhere,” said Madden’s mom, Sally Jenks.
“They were on the monkey bars, the rock-climbing wall, the fire pole, the bottom of the slide. Just everywhere,” she said.
The little boy’s cut bled a lot, but is healing well the day after. He says it felt like his finger was “cracked open ” and it “hurt.”
It could have been much worse.
“All the razor blades were placed up, so when you grabbed them it would hit their wrists or your hands,” said Madden’s dad, Jayson Kenney. He called the plot disturbing and disgusting.
When I first heard about this, I thought it may have been some kind of pledge prank. But it turns out that there were a dozen blades glued to the equipment, sharp side up. By Kenney's reckoning, it had to have taken at least 20 minutes to plant the blades. Given how many there were and where they were (at the bottom of a slide?????), whoever did this knew what the hell they were doing. Not only that, but Sally Jenks said that Madden was barely touching the blade--and yet he was bleeding badly. If he'd been able to put his weight on the bars, those blades could have sliced his hand to pieces.
When Philadelphia Eagles O-lineman Julian Vandervelde heard about this, he offered a $1,000 reward for anyone who helps track down the sleazebag who did this. He grew up across the Mississippi in Davenport, Iowa and still lives there during the offseason with his wife and 15-month-old son, and said he had to do something to stop "a psychopath roaming around the Quad Cities."
I don't know what the penalty is for felonious assault in Illinois, but I'm hoping if whoever did this gets caught, he gets close to the maximum.