For youths with roller shoes, no more freewheeling

Stores and malls are prohibiting the use of products like Heelys due to customer complaints, injuries

Both Giant and Shoppers Food Warehouse supermarket chains have policies prohibiting use of Heelys, citing customer complaints and the risk of injury to children using the shoes. Westfield Wheaton has no set policy against the shoes, but security staff will ask children using Heelys for skating to stop or they will be removed from the mall.

‘‘The first thing is safety and the second is, honestly, this isn’t a roller-skating rink,” said Sharayah Wood, private security dispatcher at Westfield Wheaton. Wood said the shoes are difficult to spot due to their resemblance to shoes used for skateboarding, but security guards stop plenty of children wheeling around on the mall’s floors and open spaces.

Shoppers and Giant have signs warning against the use of Heelys, in addition to skateboards, in-line skates and bicycles. Rick Rodgers, senior vice president of operations for Shoppers Food and Pharmacy, said the Lanham-based company’s anti-Heely policy has been in effect for a year as a matter of ‘‘common sense.”

‘‘They can wear the shoes but we don’t want them wheeling around, just like we don’t want them riding skateboards or bikes,” he said. ‘‘They don’t have control over themselves and we don’t want them hurting themselves or customers.”

Giant Food Inc.’s company policy against Heelys has been in place for about a year, said Jamie Miller, the Landover-based company’s public affairs manager. At the Giant Supermarket in Aspen Hill, the Heely ban began as soon as the store opened in November.

Monique Price, the assistant manager at that location, said the store’s staff won’t kick anyone out for using the shoes to skate but will ask the child to take the wheels out. Regardless, she said children will often find stealthy ways to satisfy their Heely fix.

‘‘You have kids that come in and out of the store with Heelys, and of course they are going to click them up every now and then when no one is looking,” she said.

Heelys Inc. respects the right of stores to prohibit its product, said Brooks Radighieri, consumer marketing manager for Heelys, which is based in Carrollton, Texas. She said each box of shoes comes with instructions and advises children to wear protective gear when ‘‘heeling.”

‘‘We have always told our skaters to pay attention to where you are, and if you are in a place where heeling is not allowed, take out the wheels,” Radighieri said, adding that Heelys have been proven safer than all other roller sports gear.

Lanita Whitehurst, a Wheaton resident, acknowledged the safety risks with Heelys but said it’s a personal, strategic move to allow her two children, Gabby, 6, and V.J., 9, to wear them.

‘‘I let them wear them because it’s an easy way to get them to go shopping,” she said. ‘‘All I have to say is, ‘You can wear your Heelys!’”

V.J. Whitehurst wasn’t concerned about getting hurt on his Heelys, but only because he doesn’t wear them much any more.

‘‘Those were cool last year,” he said.

In June 2007, a study examining the safety risks of roller shoes by the Trauma and Orthopedic Surgery Department at Temple Street Children’s University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, was published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It was the first study of Heely-related injuries.

Over a 10-week period in the summer of 2006, doctors charted 67 injuries caused directly by Heelys and its British counterpart, Street Gliders.

Those injuries accounted for 8 percent of the workload for the trauma unit during the span, and injuries ranged from arm fractures and elbow dislocations to leg and ankle fractures. The mean age of those treated was 9.6 years old and 56 of the children were female. None of the 67 injured children wore any safety gear, the study said.

At Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Orthopedic Surgeon and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Christopher Magee said he sees similar arm injuries from Heelys as he does in-line skates and skateboards. The difference, Magee said, is that parents are less aware of safety risks with Heelys and less likely to make their child wear protective gear.

‘‘Because they are also shoes, they lull parents into a false sense of security,” he said. ‘‘They figure they are just getting another pair of shoes, but they should be treating them like in-line skates.”