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A three year-old boy has died after falling from a 29th floor balcony of a New York City apartment building on Saturday morning as his devastated mother screamed out ‘My baby, my baby, he is up there,’ from the street below.
Police responded a 911 call at the Taino Towers residential complex in Harlem around 11:10 a.m., where they found the toddler on a third floor scaffolding wearing a diaper and a yellow t-shirt.
Heartbreaking video from a witness driving by shows the chaotic scene in front of the apartment building, and captures a woman falling to her knees next to the ambulance as emergency workers attempt to her console her.
Neighbors told the New York Post they heard what sounded like a ‘boom’ and a ‘thump’ when the boy fell. He was transported to Harlem Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The toddler’s distraught mother cried out from the street below, witnesses said. She was photographed weeping by the Post. His father tried to climb onto the scaffolding to get to the child, witnesses added, but he unable to do so.
A neighbor told The Post that her kids heard ‘a big fight’ between adults coming from the 29th-story balcony and less than 10 minutes later, there was a ‘thump.’
That neighbor, who wasn’t named, said the home had a history of domestic violence, although the toddler’s death is being treated as accidental.
Police said the child’s death is under ‘active investigation.’
A woman falls to her knees after a three-year-old boy falls from the 29th floor balcony of an apartment building in New York City on Saturday. He was rushed to the hospital where he died
The child fell from the Taino Towers residential complex (pictured) in Harlem on Saturday
‘We believe the child exited through a window, but exactly how that occurred is under investigation at the time,’ a police spokesperson told The Associated Press.
The boy, who has not been identified, fell from the 29th floor balcony of an apartment at the Taino Towers residential complex on Third Avenue between East 122nd and 123rd Streets.
Nidia Cordero, 58, a foster mom who lived on the 34th floor, said her kids heard a fight between adults on the 29th floor minutes before the toddler fell.
‘When you look out the terrace you see the baby’s body. He was in his diapers and T-shirt,’ Cordero said.
‘Then you hear screams,’ she added. ‘I think the mom was screaming and I looked and the baby was in the scaffolding.’
Other neighbors said that while the mother screamed from the street below, the boy’s father ‘ran downstairs crying,’ and tried to climb onto the scaffolding to get to the child but was unable to.
‘She was sitting on the ground in her socks,’ neighbor Alexander Townsend said of the boy’s mother. ‘She was screaming, ‘My baby, my baby, he is up there,”
Neighbors say the mother was on the ground crying out for her son who had just fallen from the 29th floor balcony in Harlem
Video from a witness driving by shows the chaotic scene in front of the apartment building
Tanjelyn Castro, 33, who lives on the 23rd floor, told The Post she heard a ‘boom’ that sounded like construction.
‘It sounded like something really heavy. It sounded like construction,’ Castro said. ‘We just started looking and everybody started coming out of their building.’
‘Everybody that were upstairs that could see down, saw the little boy with the yellow shirt. He was flat in the scaffolding.’
She then described the frantic scene as neighbors and emergency workers attempted to reach the child after what she
‘Everybody that was outside was running, climbing,’ Castro added. ‘Every man you saw was trying to get to the scaffold. It was a whole bunch of emotion.’
Another witness Richard Linares, 36, told New York Daily News that the toddler was still crying when his own son ran to help.
‘My boy that was here ran to the front. He ran up the scaffold to find the baby. The baby was still crying and breathing when he got there.
‘By the time the paramedics brought him down, they had a towel over his face.’
New York City law requires owners of buildings with three or more apartments to install window guards if a child age 10 years or younger lives there or if a tenant or occupant requests them.
It’s unclear whether window guards were installed in this particular apartment.
But neighbor Castro told The Post that the balconies are about 30 years old and are in the process of being replaced.
‘We don’t have no AC right now,’ she added. ‘Everybody hangs out on the balcony right now but I can’t say if it’s one thing or another.’
Police said the child’s death is under ‘active investigation’ and that authorities are speaking with two individuals who were inside the apartment when the boy fell.
