Mom’s tragic warning after son, 8, dies from balloon on birthday

December 17, 2025 by salah

“It was absolutely traumatic. You can’t erase it from your mind. You close your eyes, it’s all you see, it’s all you hear. You hear the screams, the shouts, the sirens. You hear the doctor’s words, saying to you that they’re really sorry. It was time for him,” his mother Carly told the Mirror.

“Then I just remember holding his hand. Me and dad had a hand each, and we just held his hands, and I said to him ‘son if your angel wings are there and you’re ready to take them, then take them. Mummy and Daddy and here with you and we’re with you all the way. If you’re ready to go son, you just go in peace,’” the grieving mother said of her son, who she described as “one of a kind with the brightest blue eyes and the cheekiest smile.”

“Literally within minutes he was gone. It was as if he was waiting for me and his dad to give him that OK. These are visions I will never be able to erase or forget.”

Suffocation

At an inquest into his death, the coroner confirmed that Joshua’s cause of death was “consistent with asphyxia involving a helium balloon.”

Though helium itself isn’t toxic, Coroner Andre Rebello told the Liverpool Echo that the gas had displaced the oxygen Joshua needed to breathe.

“The breathing of helium prevented oxygen getting into his body, and wContinue reading…