Tragedy Strikes Queens Family

Three-year-old Deonte Riley was at the Sunrise Multiplex Cinemas in Valley Stream watching the film Alien Versus Predator with his parents and older brother Sunday when, suddenly, tragedy struck.
The Kew Gardens family had all been eating from a small tub of popcorn when Deontes mom, Elaine McIntosh, saw her youngest son choking. With her husbands help, she immediately rushed the boy out of the theatre where they tried, but failed, to clear his air passage.
The tot was pronounced dead on arrival at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre.
"I was trying everything," said Eddie Riley, the boys father. "I was trying to put my finger down his throat. I didn’t feel anything."
Police also tried to clear the boys air passage and perform CPR, but to no avail. His body was taken to the Nassau University Medical Center morgue pending a medical examiners report.
McIntosh, 41, and her husband, 36, were on their first night out together with their family in more than a year when the tragedy struck. McIntosh had lost her job as a special education teacher last year, leading her family to become homeless for a time. They have been staying at The Briarwood, a Kew Gardens homeless shelter.
McIntosh was so overcome with grief after the death of her child late Sunday that she left the shelter and lay down on 134th Street. Her husband took her to Jamaica Hospital, where she was given medical assistance and was kept under observation.
In 2000, 160 children under the age of 14 nationwide died from choking on food or other objects, according to figures released by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
E-mail this reporter at cahir@queenscourier.com .