Grieving parents of fatally crushed toddler Sophie Ann Schulz tell of sorrow, warn others

SOPHIE Ann Schulz would have been five-and-a-half now.

SOPHIE Ann Schulz would have been five-and-a-half now.

"You always wonder what she would have been like," says her father, Brendon.

In an exclusive piece for The Advertiser, Mr Schulz writes about his cheeky, beautiful child, who was fatally crushed by a hydraulic massage bed when she was 18 months old.

In 2009, Sophie was playing inside the Fravira Clinic at St Morris while her mum, Justine, had a massage.

It all went terribly wrong when the massage therapist lowered the "Athlegen Powerlift massage table", not realising the curious Sophie had crawled underneath.

"With sparkling blue eyes she waved her little hands and grinned as I said goodbye," Mr Schulz writes.

"I would never see those sparkling eyes again."

He also writes that the following days were "the darkest and longest of our lives".

Mr Schulz wanted to pay tribute to Sophie but also wanted to warn people of the dangers of these commonly-used beds.

"(To) parents - please just know that in the middle of an otherwise safe room is potentially a loaded gun - machinery that can kill," he wrote.

SA Deputy State Coroner Anthony Schapel released his report this week.

He found an 18-month-old child would be "completely oblivious to the dangers posed by the machinery".

"In my view the conclusion is inescapable that a small child, totally naive to the nuances of moving machinery, could be foreseen as having a tendency to be attracted towards machinery such as this," he said.

The clinic's owner, Elvira Brunt - who was not in the room at the time of Sophie's death - said it was "just a freakish accident".

But Mr Schapel said you did not need "20/20 hindsight to state such an obvious proposition".

He also recommended massage bed manufacturers develop and install guards around hydraulics, that a national safety standard be drafted and that children be banned from massage rooms.

At the time of Sophie's death, Ms Brunt had been earlier named during an inquiry into Bogus, Unregistered and Deregistered Health Practitioners.