4-year-old Wis. girl lucky to be alive after 150-pound TV falls on her

A Wisconsin family is warning others to be secure their large television sets after an old box-style TV tipped off a dresser and fell on their four-year-old daughter, fracturing her skull and nearly killing her.

Ahriana Sonnentag was playing near the nearly 150-pound TV when it fell off the dresser and landed on her. Her parents were just one room away, when they heard the bang.

“[The TV] was laying on half of her head,” Ahriana’s mother, Cassandra, said. “She was seized up and wasn’t moving.”

Across the county 30 kids per day have a television fall on them and each year more than a dozen children are killed from television tip-overs, according to health officials. Quick medical action helped save her daughter’s life and now Sonnentag and her husband are hoping her story will save others.

"The biggest thing right now is we want people to know that it is an issue and hope that seeing her pictures and seeing her story will put a face to it,” Sonnentag said.

Experts say parents should place box-style TVs low to the ground on stable furniture and secure flat screen TVs to a panel.

“It took my husband and another guy just to get [the TV] up there,” Sonnentag said. “We never assumed she would mess with it. We never assumed she would climb on it.”