Four-year-old seriously injured at children's play facility

A 4-year-old boy has been seriously injured at Bounce and Beyond in East Tamaki. Photo / Tess Nichol

A 4-year-old boy was seriously injured at a children's play facility in Auckland today.

Police said they were alerted to the incident at East Tamaki's Bounce and Beyond at 12.20pm.

A previous report said the boy was 5 years old. This was an error in information provided by police.

St John Ambulance took the boy to Middlemore Hospital in serious condition.

As of 2.15pm, the boy was stable and comfortable, a Counties Manukau DHB spokeswoman said.

Police said they were continuing to gather information about the incident. There were no suspicious circumstances and the matter was being referred to WorkSafe.

A WorkSafe spokesman said the organisation was making preliminary inquiries. "We're unlikely to release any details, our job is simply to investigate if we decide to."

He said it would be at least 24 hours before WorkSafe would decide whether it needed to investigate or not.

A Bounce and Beyond staff member told the Herald the company could not comment on what had happened while WorkSafe was investigating. Bounce and Beyond is an indoor inflatable playground which also caters for children's parties.

It closed its doors this afternoon after the incident.

The gates leading to the site's driveway were closed and a yellow police cordon was erected outside the building's entrance.

Two police officers could be seen in the entrance way and a third was stationed at the top of the drive.

The officer told the Herald no one on site was available to talk to media.

Staff at an automotive workshop next door to the playground said they heard sirens and wondered what was going on.

Today's event is the latest in a series of incidents of children and teens being injured at commercial play facilities.

In October, WorkSafe announced its inspectors would visit trampoline parks throughout the country after a spike in injuries.

Christchurch emergency doctors had seen 28 injuries in just two months from indoor trampoline parks in the city, including two people who broke their necks and a teenage boy who suffered serious spinal injuries.