2-Year-Old Dies After Van-Window Accident

A 2--year-old Santa Ana girl died Monday, a week after she tried to climb into the family minivan and caught her neck on a partially opened window, authorities said.

Vanessa Del Campo, who had been declared brain dead, was taken off life support systems about 9:15 a.m. at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

Police and family members Monday described her death as a tragic, freak accident.

Ana Ramos, the girl’s aunt, said the accident occurred Oct. 29 when Vanessa and her father were going to meet her mother for lunch.

“Vanessa went outside and tried to get into the car before her father came out of the house,” Ramos said.

Police Lt. Robert Helton said the girl “had taken a chair and placed it against the passenger side of her parent’s 1988 Ford Aerostar. She climbed up on the chair, stood on it and pulled herself up on the window and lost her grip. She ended up strangling herself.”

Vanessa’s father, Sal Del Campo, found his daughter unconscious and dangling by her neck from the minivan’s window, Ramos said.

“She couldn’t have been there for more than minute or so,” Ramos said, adding that her father had tried to revive her.

Paramedics arrived at the family’s house on the 800 block of South Broadway and took the toddler to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. For a week the family held vigil in the hospital, hoping Vanessa’s condition would improve.

“Her parents were in shock,” the aunt said. “They just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.”

Last week doctors told the family that Vanessa “probably wasn’t going to make it,” Ramos said.

Inside the Del Campo’s brown stucco home Monday, family members mourned the girl’s death.

“It was a freak accident,” Ramos said. “Kids are kids. You can’t isolate them all the time . . . at the blink of an eye so many things can happen.”