A 2-year-old boy was killed by a falling tree Wednesday as a surprising tornado tore through a west Detroit suburb.
The toddler was sleeping with his mother in Livonia when a massive tree crashed through their roof and onto their bed, officials said.
Rescuers worked for nearly an hour to reach the mother and her son, but the boy was pronounced dead at the scene. The woman was hospitalized in critical condition.
The family did not take shelter because no tornado sirens or emergency warnings were issued for the region. Livonia officials said they rely on National Weather Service alerts before giving people a heads-up, but no NWS alerts were issued.
“A representative from the NWS called it a spin-up storm which didn’t show up on their radars in enough time to issue a warning,” the Livonia fire department wrote on Facebook.
The weather service confirmed details of the storm on Wednesday night. The tornado traveled 5.5 miles with a peak wind speed of 95 mph, making it an EF1 twister.
“This is a terrible tragedy for our community,” Mayor Maureen Miller Brosnan said in the statement. “Our hearts are broken, too, and we send our deepest sympathies.”
Elsewhere, tornado damage was reported in Montgomery County, Md., northwest of Washington, D.C. Five people were injured in Gaithersburg, 15 miles outside the nation’s capital, when a tree crushed a single-family home, officials said. Two other structures also collapsed in the city, but no further injuries were reported.
With News Wire Services
