Police warn that people shouldn’t play or sled in city streets where cars may have difficulty stopping. They also discourage people from playing on closed streets, though it is legal.

A tragic case from 1989 explains their reasons.

On Feb. 2, 1989, the 12-year-old daughter of former King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng was sledding on an inner tube with two seventh-grade classmates near her Magnolia home.

The girls and other neighborhood kids were going down an icy hill on West McGraw Street – a street closed to traffic.

The inner tube went out of control and slid under a parked car.

All three girls went to a hospital, Karen Maleng with serious head injuries. She was flown to Group Health Hospital.

Maleng died five hours later.

“It could have been any of us,” 12-year-old friend Michael Magnano told the Seattle P-I at the time.

Karen’s death was difficult for Norm Maleng, who died of cardiac arrest last year.

His colleague and current King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said at Maleng’s funeral he often attributed the little joys in life – an open parking spot, the seamless press conference — to his “angel Karen.”

“He would say, ‘There’s nothing that anybody can do to hurt me now,'” Satterberg recalled Maleng saying. “‘I’ve already had the greatest hurt there is.'”

In three days of February 1989, including the day Karen Maleng died, there were 125 injuries attributed to sledding accidents in the Seattle area. Maleng was one of four fatalities.

This week, Seattle firefighters and medics haven’t responded to any sledding related accidents, fire department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said Thursday night.

“I think a lot of people are staying off the roads,” she said.

If you want to sled, city-run golf courses in Seattle are open all weekend. For more information, click here.

Read the initial P-I story on Maleng’s death here. The follow-up story from Feb. 4, 1989 is here and here.