‘It blew off the curb’: Mum issues plea after toddler suffers brain injury in freak supermarket trolley accident

An Australian mum has spoken out after a supermarket trolley caused a significant injury to her young daughter in an accident that could’ve been prevented.

Casey Gobbert, a Queensland-based mother-of-two, was shopping with her two children on February 9 when her youngest, 17-month-old Millie, hit her head on the asphalt road when the trolley she was seated in “blew off the curb and tipped”.

Speaking to 7News, Gobbert said she had left Millie in the trolley’s child seat as she went to strap her older brother, three-year-old Lincoln, into the car.

Turning her back for mere seconds, Gobbert was horrified when she looked over and saw the trolley moving towards the curb. She tried to catch it but missed, she told the outlet, with the trolley tipping onto the road and smacking Millie’s head against the ground. 

“The whole trolley tipped sideways, off the raised walkway it was on. Because Millie was in the seat, she stayed put in the seat and hit her head as the trolley landed,” Gobbert told 7News. 

The child was rushed to Logan Hospital, where doctors found she had suffered a significant brain bleed and ordered emergency surgery. 

“They monitored her for a few hours and decided she needed a CT scan, which found a large brain bleed causing pressure on her brain.”

Millie was sedated, intubated and rushed to Brisbane’s Children’s Hospital, where she underwent emergency brain surgery. According to Gobbert, her daughter was released from surgery at 2am on Friday, but remained in the paediatric intensive care unit until 1:30pm on Saturday, before being moved to the high acuity ward.

The mum told the outlet that Millie began improving following the surgery, with a second CT scan showing her brain had responded well to the procedure. Almost five days after the freak accident, Gobbert says her “cheeky self is coming through”. 

Gobbert is now hoping to use the experience as a call to action, urging Australia’s leading supermarkets to make sure any trolley with a child seat also has a braking system in place to prevent further accidents. 

“I am determined to make this happen. If I can do this and it stops just one child from being injured, then it will be a success,” she told 7News.

“Prams by law have to have a brake and an arm strap. Why should a trolley be any different?” 

Gobbert admitted that she carries immense guilt following the incident, but although she can’t change the past, she hopes to change the future by stopping any other children from suffering like Millie.