Regardless, the resulting damage can best be described as someone stomping on the top of the ottoman near one end and the resulting force of their foot broke through the thinly constructed top, shoving it downward leaving a void and the foam without support. And over time, or perhaps at the time, ended up fracturing the foam cushion. Fortunately though, the fabric was unharmed but it was uncomfortable to sit on the ottoman and it looked somewhat hideous in a room otherwise filled with nice looking furniture.
To repair this ottoman I pulled about 600 staples and carefully removed the piping, covering, poly-fill, and polyester wrap, and foam to expose the bare frame. With some assistance from one of the possible candidates who may have damaged this piece in the first place, we were able to restore the heavyweight dense paperboard top to near-pristine condition and fixed it in place with several well placed staples. The youngster helping with the restoration suggested installing a couple of 1" pine boards for additional support and I agreed with her - there may be a budding engineer in there after all but I'm sure that's just wishful thinking. Regardless, I was able to glue the foam shreds back together, sewed the seams back together on our recently acquired sewing machine (yes, we've been blessed with yet another sewing machine, a Juki DNU-1541S to be exact), then reassembled the ottoman. And, I'm pleased to say, as does my wife, it looks as good as new!
My only complaint is, I didn't think to take any pictures of the tear down, nor the rebuild process!!! I'll work on correcting that on the next project.