Child crushed to death in freak accident at Sun Dial revolving restaurant

A five-year-old boy sustained fatal injuries at a rotating restaurant atop a skyscraper in downtown Atlanta when his head became lodged between a stationary wall and a table affixed to the slow-moving floor, officials said.

The Sun Dial restaurant’s automatic systems stopped the floor’s rotating motion when the child became stuck on Friday and then employees dislodged him from the tight space, Atlanta police said in a statement. But the child was critically injured and died later that day at a hospital.

“The kid was just wandering as kids will do. Somehow he found himself in a critical situation where he’s lodged in between the rotating floor and the wall,” Warren Pickard, a spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department, told reporters on Saturday.

The boy, whose head was caught within about 13 cm of space, according to police, was identified as Charles Holt of Charlotte, North Carolina, an investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said on Saturday.

His death was ruled accidental and he was found to have suffered crushing injuries to his head and brain, it said.

Sun Dial’s website says it offers 360-degree views of the Atlanta area.

A representative for the business told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution it would be closed until further notice.