ATLANTA • A five-year-old boy sustained fatal injuries at a rotating restaurant atop a skyscraper in the US city of Atlanta when his head became lodged between a stationary wall and a table affixed to the slow-moving floor, officials said.

The Sun Dial restaurant's automatic systems stopped the floor's rotating motion when the child became stuck last Friday, and employees freed him from the tight space, Atlanta police said in a statement. But the child was critically injured and died later that day at a hospital.

"The kid was just wandering as kids will do. Somehow he found himself in a critical situation where he's lodged in between the rotating floor and the wall," a spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department told reporters on Saturday.

The boy, whose head was caught within about 13cm of space, was identified as Charles Holt of Charlotte, North Carolina, said an investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office.

The Sun Dial is located on the 72nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel in the Georgia capital's downtown, with its website saying the restaurant offers 360-degree views of the Atlanta area.

REUTERS