RISHI Rayapati was thrilled to be celebrating his sixth birthday at his favourite fast food chain - McDonald's - but he did not get to enjoy a single bite.

Things went terribly wrong for the boy before he could even step into the restaurant. As he pushed the glass door open, it shattered and rained glass nuggets on him, leaving him with more than 20 cuts and a headful of glass fragments.

It was not the first time that a glass door at one of the fast food chain's outlets had splintered and hurt someone. In 2005, McDonald's was sued by a businessman whose son was hurt when a door broke at a Jurong outlet.

The latest incident occurred at the McDonald's outlet at Northpoint in Yishun on July 3. Rishi's mother said she asked for a first-aid kit as blood was streaming from his arms, but the manager advised her to take him to the nearest clinic instead, where she would meet them.

Said Madam Usha Jyothir Mayee, a systems analyst, 33: 'It was so sudden. The pieces fell like a waterfall on him.'

Unfamiliar with the area because she lives in Bukit Batok, she picked up her crying child and ran down the road hoping to find a clinic open at 9pm.

Her husband, in the meantime, had gone to meet a friend who was supposed to join them for the birthday dinner.

At a clinic two blocks down, the doctor advised Madam Usha to go to KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH).

The couple later drove their son there. It took hospital staff almost four hours to clean his cuts and remove all the glass pieces from his body. He had cuts all over his arms, back and face, but his head was the most severely injured.

Rishi has recovered, but Madam Usha is still struggling with many unanswered questions.'Right now, we're not even thinking about compensation. We want to know how something like this could happen in a restaurant that calls itself family-friendly,' she said. 'My son is now afraid of glass doors and he doesn't want to go to McDonald's any more.'

Read the full story in Monday's edition of the Straits Times.

mariaa@sph.com.sg