Girl hurt trying to slip through car's window

By DAVID PEDREIRA

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 20, 2000

TAMPA -- Three-year-old Alana Wiggins should have been blowing out the candles on her birthday cake and opening presents Saturday.

Instead, the Tampa girl clung to life in a hospital, critically injured after she slipped out of her family's mobile home late Friday and nearly choked to death on a partially open car window.

Alana, whom neighbors described as inquisitive and friendly, wandered outside her home in the Flying Cloud Mobile Home Park off Nebraska Avenue while her 15-year-old babysitter slept on the couch, police said.

She was trying to get inside a Buick Cutlass Ciera parked behind the mobile home when she climbed on a lunch box and stuck her head through the car window, authorities said.

Her mother, 19-year-old Sabrina Rose, found Alana hanging from the side of the car about 10:30 p.m., minutes after she arrived home to discover Alana missing from the mobile home.

"She came around the side of the house and screamed, "I found my baby hanging from the window,' " said next-door neighbor Meredith Shutters. "When I saw Alana lying there on the back of the car, she was just so white, and she wasn't breathing."

Another neighbor, Julie Neve, helped perform CPR on the little girl until paramedics arrived. Neve said Alana wasn't breathing and didn't have a pulse when she was taken away in the ambulance.

The toddler was in critical condition at University Community Hospital Saturday afternoon.

"I'm hoping she survives this," Neve said. "She's an adorable little child. She looks out the window and waves at us every day."

Friends said Alana's injury was a crushing blow for her young mother, who worked long hours at a nearby convenience store to provide for her two children.

Rose moved in with her mother after breaking up with Alana's father, Shutters said. Rose was too distraught to speak to a reporter at the hospital Saturday.

Sheriff's deputies didn't release the name of the babysitter. No charges were expected to be filed, said sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter.

Neighbors said Rose frantically knocked on their doors after she got home and discovered her daughter was missing. Several people joined in the search, which lasted only a few minutes.

Alana had turned 3 earlier in the week, and Rose planned to have a party Saturday, Shutters said. She had bought a cake and invited neighbors.

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