A three-year-old boy died Saturday after falling from the 29th-floor balcony of an apartment building in New York City, police said, based on a preliminary investigation.
“We believe the child went out of a window, but we are still investigating how this happened.”
Police found the injured boy on a third-floor scaffold after receiving a 911 call at 11:09 a.m. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“We believe the child climbed out of a window, but we are still investigating how exactly this happened,” a police spokesman said. The apartment is located in the residential complex of Taino Towers in Harlem.
New York City law requires owners of buildings with three or more apartments to install window guards if a child 10 years of age or younger lives there or if a tenant or occupant requests it. It is unclear if window guards were installed in this particular apartment.
The spokesman said the boy’s death is under “active investigation” and that police are speaking to two individuals who were in the apartment at the time the boy fell from the balcony.
Nidia Cordero, who lives on the 34th floor of the building, told the New York Post that she suddenly heard what she thinks was the boy’s mother screaming.
“I looked,” he commented, “and the baby was on the scaffold.”
Richard Linares told the New York Daily News that he was outside the apartment complex when the boy fell.
“We heard a big noise,” he commented. “My son who was here ran to the front. He ran up the scaffold to find the baby. The baby was still crying and breathing when he arrived.”
He then added: “When the paramedics put him down, they had a towel over his face.”