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NY POST FLUSHING MEADOWS, NEW YORK The South Asian sport of kite-fighting -- featured in the book and movie "The Kite Runner" -- nearly cost a skateboarding Queens boy his life when a razor-sharp wire sliced his throat, according to a lawsuit. Jared Kopeloff was skateboarding outside his Flushing co-op apartment building in October 2009 when he was clotheslined by a downed kite string. The glass-encrusted wire ripped into the then-12-year-old's throat and left him scarred from ear to ear from a wound his lawyer said took 400 to 500 stitches to close. The boy also lost two lymph nodes in the accident.  DreamWorks A sharpened kite wire, like those used for aerial sport in the film "The Kite Runner" (above), slashed the throat of Jared Kopeloff, 13, as he skateboarded on this Flushing street. Now his family is suing the city for allowing the kite fights to take place in nearby Flushing Meadows Park and the co-op complex for failing to remove the wire that was left hanging between two buildings after getting severed in a duel and drifting over to the complex. "I heard a noise like bees," Jared said. "I thought I went into a beehive. Going down I felt something on my neck." He was thrown to the ground, with the wire buried in his neck, and neighbors raced over to help, he said. "They had to flip me over to get the string off," Jared said. One of the good Samaritans took off his T-shirt and applied it to Jared's neck to stanch the heavy bleeding. He was rushed to the hospital, where, Jared says, a doctor told him he put in "a million stitches." Police found a kite on the roof along with about 300 yards of sharpened line, his father said. Kite fighting is a popular pastime in South Asian countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. The sport was outlawed for several years in Afghanistan but came back after the Taliban government fell. Roy Silverberg, the family's lawyer, said US law hasn't caught up with the phenomenon, which has seen a resurgence after the book and movie gained prominence. Using power drills to reel in the ultra-sharp wire, practitioners of the sport now gather in Flushing Meadows Corona Park to battle, the suit says. "The city should have known these kite festivals are happening in Queens parks -- and should have known the danger that the glass-encrusted string poses," Silverberg said. The suit, filed in Queens Supreme Court, seeks unspecified damages for Jared's injuries. Joyce Equities, which manages the co-op development where the Kopeloffs live, did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment. A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department said, "This was a tragic accident. We have received the lawsuit and are unable to comment further because of the pending litigation."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/teen_throat_slashed_by_kite_string_NJo7MZuqPjlGhN7cQaccYK#ixzz0X3cXeIKa
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