Boy playing on splash pad nearly swallowed by sinkhole in his front yard

A 20-month-old boy was enjoying a splash pad on his front yard when a sink hole unexpectedly opened up and almost swallowed him.

Josiah was frolicking on the pad at his family’s home in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, when a more than 10-foot-deep sinkhole appeared underneath out of nowhere.

‘It was like a really big pop,’ his mother, Elyana Schuck, told News 12.

‘I thought the splash pad popped and I looked around and I just saw him almost go into the ground, so I immediately just pulled him out and my son was just crying.

‘He was so scared.’

Josiah managed to avoid what would have been a dangerous fall.

But his mother has not stopped worrying.

‘I couldn’t even sleep last night. I had anxiety, kept having panic attacks. Just like re-thinking about the whole situation like the what ifs, if I wasn’t watching him fully, you know?’ she said.

‘A new fear unlocked. You’re not like safe. This is a safe spot, like I said now – Is he even safe being in my house?’

Contractors examined the sinkhole and determined it was necessary to have excavators dig up the front lawn to see what caused the sudden depression.

The mother also dreads the possibility that they will have to leave their home.

‘If it goes towards the house, we obviously have to relocate for the time being and if it’s not, we can stay here until they do the construction,’ Schuck said.

The terrifying incident on Monday afternoon was not the first of its kind in the neighborhood about 20 miles northwest of New York City.

For one neighbor, Joe Nasso, it was a dejà vu moment of sorts. He said his parents had a sinkhole on their property next door two decades ago.

‘The landscaper was cutting the lawn and literally fell through the lid into the hole and it was about 10 feet deep,’ Nasso told the TV station.

Just two days after the splash pad sinkhole, a mine collapsed and created a massive sinkhole in the middle of a football stadium in Alton, Illinois. Workers at the site avoided falling in, but the sinkhole swallowed one of the lights at the field. The dramatic scene was captured on CCTV footage.

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