Ikea dresser recall: Millions of chests of drawers recalled after deaths of three toddlers

Customers have been offered a full refund or a free repair kit to anchor their furniture to the wall

Three children have been killed by falling Malm dressers since 2014 (Ikea)

Ikea is recalling millions of sets of furniture after three children were crushed to death.

The Skandinavian supergiant announced that it will no longer sell the “Malm” products as they could be a “danger”, said USA president Lars Peterson, as reported by NBC News.

“Please take them out of the room,” he told NBC viewers, referring to any Malm furniture they have bought.

He added that customers would be offered a full refund or a free repair kit to anchor furniture to the wall.

“The recalled chests and dressers are unstable if they are not properly anchored to the wall, posing a tip-over and entrapment hazard that can result in death or injuries to children,” an Ikea statement read.

Ikea’s so-called anchor campaign resulted in the company sending out 300,000 repair kits.

It has since recalled 29 million units of Malm furniture, including chests with three to six drawers, sold through June 2016.

The move from Ikea comes four months after a 23-month-old toddler called Theodore McGee was crushed by a six-drawer dresser which tipped over, the third child to be killed in this way since 2014.

Ikea also recalled millions of the same product set in 2015 but this year it has stopped selling them altogether.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission found last year that a child is sent to hospital every 24 minutes due to a falling piece of furniture, and a child is killed every two weeks.


 Theodore McGee was 23 months old when he was killed in February 
 (Alan Feldman)

The second child to be killed by a Malm dresser two years ago was Curren Collas. His mother, Jaquelyn Collas, went to his room and found the 136-pound dresser had tipped over on top of her son.

“The reason I had to share this story with so much detail is that I don’t ever want to forget,” she wrote on Facebook. "I am so afraid that my memories of Curren will fade. I wanted to share this because I want you to learn from my mistakes. Bolt EVERYTHING down. Dressers, book shelves, TVs, anything that could possibly fall."

Two-year-old Camden Ellis from Washington was also trapped under a three-drawer Malm dresser in 2014 and died three days later.

All three toddlers and their families are represented by lawyer Alan Feldman, who said in a statement that Ikea did not provide “adequate warnings or safety instructions about tip-overs”.

His firm created a website to encourage people to report tippings-over of other items of furniture.