Andanh.com

Nine Kansas children have died from cars backing over them in the past nine years, and five of those have happened in Wichita.

That includes Justin Jack McElhaney, the 2-year-old killed when a Ford SUV driven by a family member backed over him in the 1200 block of North West Street on Sunday.

Deaths and injuries from similar accidents occur an average of 50 times a week across the country, according to Kids and Cars, a national nonprofit based in Leawood.

The thousands who are injured or die each year have similar stories to Sunday's:

• Most children who die from vehicles backing over them are between the ages of 1 and 2.

Now you know

Follow these tips to keep children safe from vehicles backing up:

• Walk around and behind a vehicle before moving it.

• Know where your kids are. Make children move away from your vehicle to a place where they are in full view before moving the car.

• Make sure another adult is properly supervising children before moving your vehicle.

Judge Bryce Abbott sometimes has to measure blood-alcohol levels of people who stand before him in Wichita Municipal Court to answer charges of driving while intoxicated.

That's right: They come to court drunk.

"They'll say, 'But I haven't had anything to drink since last night,' " Abbott said between court hearings last week. "That's probably the wrong thing to say, because it tells me you must have been pretty drunk last night."

In the past year Abbott and judges in the Sedgwick County District Court have been using ankle bracelets that monitor alcohol use of people who have been ordered to abstain from drinking as a condition of their probation.

Their application is up to the judge's discretion, though the bracelets generally are used for repeat offenders who have had problems with alcohol.