A four-year-old boy is dead after falling from a 10th-floor window of a high-rise apartment building in downtown Stamford, Connecticut, a loss that police are describing as a tragic accident. Investigators from the police and fire departments converged on the building on Prospect Street on Monday afternoon in a search for answers to how such a young child could have fallen to his death.
The fall happened about 7:20 p.m. Sunday at the 12-story high-rise. Investigators said the window was open and that there was a screen between the window and the child, but that the screen was not enough to hold the boy back. Police said they are still trying to determine exactly how he came to fall out of the window on the side of the building.
Police said they do not suspect any type of foul play and that there appears to be no criminality involved in what looks to be a purely tragic accident. They also said there was no negligence on the part of the building owner or the management company, and no violation of any rules regarding window guards at the property.
A sergeant identified as Boger told reporters that there are no regulations that mandate guards in high-rise apartment windows, a detail that has been difficult for neighbors and investigators alike to absorb. The absence of such a requirement left the open window, with only a screen in place, as the focus of the effort to understand how the boy fell.
The tragedy shook the neighborhood, where residents gathered near the scene struggling to make sense of it. Joyce Malachi, a 73-year-old neighbor and great-grandmother, could not hold back her tears even though she did not know the child or the family, saying the boy should be alive and playing rather than dead. Another neighbor described seeing an uncle plead with police and the father desperately searching for his son before going to the hospital with his wife.
Police had not released the family's name and said it has been difficult to communicate with them because of a language barrier, adding that they were treading very lightly in what they called a sensitive investigation. Authorities said they had coordinated with grief counselors to help support the family through an extremely difficult time as the inquiry into the fall continued.