Indiana Boy Suffers Strange Object-in-Mouth Accident

SOUTH BEND -- When Brenton Kimbrell decided to chase his dad through a Meijer checkout lane Thursday evening, the 4-year-old likely hadn't planned on drawing so much attention.

But shortly afterward, he sat surrounded by curious onlookers, worried parents, and a group of paramedics with flashlights and medical bags.

The small, brown-haired boy remained perfectly silent on a store bench with fear in his eyes and a 2 1/2-inch metal hook protruding from his mouth.

"How in the world did he get that in there?" father David Kimbrell said he asked his wife after the incident.

No one could really say, and Brenton wasn't talking.

Paramedics and emergency room staff later said it was one of the strangest object-in-mouth accidents they can remember involving a child.

Brenton had been standing near his mother and father in the checkout lane of the Portage Avenue Meijer about 9 p.m., when David Kimbrell went back to check the price of a squirrel feeder, he said.

In doing so, he had to cross through a closed checkout lane that was sealed off with a hanging chain.

Although Brenton's mother called him to come back, the young boy ran after his dad and somehow became snagged on the chain as he tried to run through.

When Brenton's parents went to free him, they saw that an S-shaped hook that had been holding the chain in place had come loose and somehow lodged in the boy's mouth.

"He was stuck," Kimbrell said. "I don't know if he flung (the chain) off when he ran through it and got caught."

Brenton cried a little at the beginning of the ordeal, his dad said, as his parents and store staff tried to figure out how badly he was injured. The metal chain connected to the hook was dangling from the boy's mouth.

By the time paramedics arrived and cut the chain, Brenton was done crying and shed no more tears for the remainder of his emergency room experience.

Just to be safe, medics had to take the boy to the hospital in case dislodging the metal caused bleeding or breathing difficulties, they said.

Brenton didn't make a sound as his dad carried him -- hook and all -- to a waiting ambulance and then only looked up at medical staff with wide eyes as they gathered around him at Memorial Hospital.

When asked if the hook hurt, Brenton replied.

"Yup."

He then settled in on a hospital bed and sat watching television until joined by the doctor.

Dr. Mark Monahan first joked with Brenton that he looked pretty good with the hook sticking out of his mouth.

"What do you think, should I take it out or leave it in?" he asked the boy.

"I want you to take it out," Brenton said, looking at the doctor seriously.

"You do?"

"Yup."

The extraction lasted all of five seconds as Monahan wiggled the metal out of the boy's mouth. It had been stuck in the back of the boy's cheek, he explained. A small puncture mark was left, but Brenton was not seriously injured.

"Put that in the baby book!" Monahan said, handing Kimbrell the metal hook.

Hospital staff and paramedics expressed relief that the injury wasn't more severe.

Kimbrell said his son was a "rough and tough" kid who rarely cried or complained of pain. The father was still confused about how exactly the hook incident happened, but relieved that his boy was fine.

And Brenton himself seemed just as happy to be finished with all that unwanted attention.

Staff writer Alicia Gallegos: agallegos@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6368