Infant’s Seat Not Secured, Report Says Feds Saying Coroner Right: Car Seat Loose When Airbag Deployed

The preliminary federal report confirms investigators’ initial determination that the infant safety seat holding 1-year-old Alexandra Greer was not strapped in the car’s seat just before she was decapitated by a deploying airbag during a minor accident.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spokesman Tim Hurd said the report was still not complete and no timetable has been set for its completion.

But, Hurd said, “there is nothing from the initial investigation that would contradict the original finding of the coroner that the safety seat was not secured to the front seat at the time of the crash.

“That is what the coroner said shortly after the incident,” he said. “Nothing we have contradicts that. It repeats what we said at the beginning.”

The infant was decapitated Nov. 26 when her mother’s Volkswagen Jetta hit another car in a slow-speed collision at a Boise shopping center.

Rebecca Blackman has maintained throughout that her daughter was belted into her forward-facing car seat on the passenger’s side of the vehicle.

She explained that after the accident she wanted to get the child out of the car and unstrapped the seat.

But the investigation by both the county coroner and the federal agency determined that the safety seat was not strapped to the car seat.

Police will wrap up their investigation without determining whether a computer chip in the car can provide any clue on why the air bag deployed in a low-speed collision. Officials said Volkswagen and the city cannot agree on who should test the chip.