Mother posts video she says shows Ikea dresser toppling onto boy

Federal safety officials have opened an investigation after a Utah mother posted a video online that appears to show an Ikea dresser toppling onto her twin 2-year-old sons and pinning one, who freed himself only with his brother's help.

The video, which the family said was taken last week, offers a harrowing glimpse of a danger that last year prompted the unprecedented recall of 29 million Ikea dressers. Since being posted Saturday on YouTube, it has drawn more than 2.6 million views.

The boy's father, Ricky Shoff, wrote in a Facebook post that he had been hesitant to share the footage but said the family did so to raise awareness.

"Please make sure all your dressers are bolted and secured to the wall," he wrote. "Please share."

Unstable Ikea dressers have been linked to the deaths of at least seven toddlers - including one in West Chester in 2014 - and led to investigations by the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission and last summer's recall.

Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the commission, on Tuesday said the agency would investigate the incident in Orem.

"Thankfully, this incident did not result in a tragedy; but far too many times each year, children have to be rushed to the ER because furniture and TVs tipped over," Wolfson said in a statement.

Ikea spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss, in a statement, said the dresser in the video appears to be similar to an Ikea dresser but that the company was working to verify whether it is. She urged those who own recalled Ikea dressers to take part in the recall and reiterated the company's stance that the best way to safeguard against tip-overs is to anchor products to the wall, calling it an "integral part of the assembly instructions."

The company, whose North American headquarters is in Conshohocken, has maintained that its dressers are meant to be tethered to the wall and has offered consumers replacement wall-anchoring kits to do so.

But as part of last year's recall, Ikea pulled half of its dressers off the market and acknowledged they did not meet the industry's applicable safety standard, meant to ensure that even unsecured dressers meet a minimum standard for stability.

Last month, the retailer agreed to pay $50 million to settle wrongful death claims filed by the families of three boys killed in tip-overs of dressers from the company's popular, low-cost Malm line.

The unsecured dresser that appeared to topple onto the twins in Utah was an eight-drawer Hemnes, their mother, Kayli, told CBS News. Attempts by the Inquirer to reach her were unsuccessful.

That model was not among the ones recalled by Ikea, though other pieces in the Hemnes line were.

The accident was captured by a home surveillance camera installed in the boys' room.

The video shows the brothers, Bowdy and Brock, pulling on the dresser drawers, sending the unit crashing forward. Bowdy easily frees himself while Brock is pinned almost entirely beneath, and struggles to break free. After nearly two minutes, Bowdy manages to push the dresser far enough for his brother to shimmy out from under it.

"You can see in the video, like he's in pain, 'I need to help my brother,' " Kayli Shoff told CBS. "Somehow he pushed it off of him. Because it is a very heavy dresser."

After the accident, she took her twins to a pediatrician who determined they had not been seriously injured in the tip-over, she told NBC News.

Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), who in June introduced federal legislation that would impose a mandatory safety standard for dressers on the furniture industry, on Tuesday released a statement calling the video "horrifying."

Casey said he would reintroduce the bill, known as the STURDY Act, which stalled last year.

tnadolny@phillynews.com 215-854-2730 @TriciaNadolny