A 10-year-old girl playing hide-and-seek just before the start of school died after tripping over a sprinkler head, hitting her head on the sidewalk and going into cardiac arrest.
Despite efforts by the principal at Dee Elementary, two students' mothers with medical training and an Ogden paramedic crew, Becky Ricks died Tuesday.The accident, witnessed by the girl's 7-year-old sister and another girl, stunned students and teachers returning to Dee for the first day of the school year.
"It's tragic," said Principal Stephen Felt, who spent much of Tuesday at McKay-Dee Hospital with the girl's parents, Brad and Denise Ricks, and their three other children.
"I was walking around supervising out there. She was lying on the ground and her little sister was nudging her saying, `Wake up, get up, wake up.' "
Felt said he started CPR until a mother who had been dropping her son off at the school ran up to him.
Martha Tippets was in her nurse's uniform on the way to work at McKay-Dee Home Care.
"I'm still crying over it," Tippets said later. "It was my son's first day of school and I was sitting in the car with him in the parking lot. I saw a teacher running down the hill and I saw someone else running in the same direction. So I got out of the car and ran down there."
Tippets said the girl had an irregular, weak pulse, her eyes were wide and glazed over, and her head was bruised where she had fallen.
She was joined by another mother, Tracy Bargo, who had been a medic in the Marines.
"I don't think any more could have been done," Tippets said.