No. 1 worst place to play with your 1-year-old niece/nephew: an automatic-lock washing machine.

If only someone had provided such life wisdom to the 15-year-old aunt of an Ontario baby last night. KCAL9 reports that, while washing clothes with her mom and sister, she was “apparently… playing with the child and placed him in the washer.” Bad call.

“I saw it tumbling and it was the sickest thing I ever saw,” says laundromat patron and “Good Samaritan” Jeff Holquin. Video (no, not of the baby, you sicko) after the jump.

Looks like hungry bear cubs weren't the only babies in danger in the San Bernardino boonies this week. Hard out there for a tike:

“He was crying, there was blood all on his face, the poor baby,” says witness Frances Durrett.

Probably the most disturbing account comes from standerby Jennifer Pena: “All you could see was the baby's chest going up and down really fast and every time the baby would open his eyes, his eyes would literally roll in the back of his head.”

Bleh. Luckily, the baby's OK, if scarred for life. Its family members, whom you've got to feel for despite their absentmindedness, now face criminal charges of child neglect.

However, as in most nightly news stories, there is something warm and fuzzy for us to come away with here:

[Holquin] yelled for help, and two construction workers came running.

“When I saw that they were trying to use a crowbar here, and the other guy was on this side, and then finally I thought, well we better break that glass,” he told KCAL. “We couldn't stop the machine. There was no safety button, no way to turn off the electricity and it was just chaos.” …

Officers said the child is probably alive because of the quick thinking of some good Samaritans.

“This is a situation where I think just a few more seconds and it would have been a very tragic result,” said Freire.

Washing machines: Not toys. Death traps. Lesson learned. Right guys?

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