Yakim McDaniels a 12-year-old from Brownsville,Brooklyn was playing around with his friends on Lott Avenue earlier today.  McDaniels clothes got caught on a parking lot gate.  Unfortunately once the young boy became entangled the gate lifted him and crushed his body at the top of it.  McDaniels was pronounced dead at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center today.

Steph Bassanini

Read the full story after the jump!

Her son’s interests were like those of many 12-year-olds, Doris Chase said: sports and clothing. He had never played on the roll-up parking lot gate in his Brownsville, Brooklyn, neighborhood. “He’d always be out playing ball,” said Ms. Chase, 33. “He liked to dress and look nice.”
But at about 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, as her son Yakim McDaniels and a group of friends horsed around at 230 Lott Avenue, his clothing became entangled in a gate apparatus. He was lifted, then crushed at the top of the structure, witnesses said.

Emergency workers were able to extricate him, but he was pronounced dead at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, the authorities said.

On Sunday evening, with candles burning at the base of the gate, Ms. Chase remembered the four words that the witness had told her: “Your son is dead.” She did not believe what she had heard.

“I still don’t believe it,” she said Sunday evening, as friends and relatives gathered to mourn with her.

Jamal Young, 28, who lives in the neighborhood, said the children had been trying to send the gate up and down, though it was unclear how they triggered its movement. A Fire Department spokesman said the gate, which allows entry to a parking lot and is approximately 20 feet high, could be opened either by a master key or by a sensor.

With Yakim suspended above, Mr. Young said, a crowd began to gather, summoned by the screams of onlookers. “He was hanging upside down from the gate,” Mr. Young said.

When Ms. Chase arrived, about 20 people had assembled, she said. Emergency workers had already arrived in an attempt to get Yakim free.

“There was nothing I could do,” Ms. Chase said.

Ms. Chase said her son was the second oldest of six children.

“He was a lovely person,” she said. “He never, ever got into trouble.”
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