A nine-year-old with special needs was killed Sunday when he fell from the window of an apartment building in the Bronx, and neighbors are mourning the loss.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the boy fell from a fourth-floor window at 240 Mount Hope Place at around 4:00 p.m., Fox 5 reported Monday.
When officers arrived at the scene, they found an unconscious and unresponsive boy with injuries “indicative of falling from an elevated position,” the outlet said.
Officials identified the boy as Miguel Ramos. He was taken to a local hospital and later pronounced dead.
The child was reportedly non-verbal and believed to be autistic, according to Pix 11. The outlet said he climbed onto an air conditioning unit moments before he fell:
Officers performed CPR before the child was taken to the hospital.
Resident Geraldo Montes saw the child on the sidewalk and told Pix 11, “Everybody was crying. This would break anyone’s heart. Here on this block everybody was crying. It hurt a lot.”
When the incident occurred, the mother, who has three other special needs children, was reportedly at home.
“She cared very much about her son,” neighbor Leonore Castillo said. “She was doting and a very good mother.”
Video footage shows officers at the scene standing behind yellow tape blocking off the area where the incident happened, and ABC 7 noted it is a six-story building:
Meanwhile, Castillo told the outlet she was the child’s former babysitter and he needed to be watched at all times to ensure his safety.
“I knew him five days after he was born. He was a sweetheart. This gives me a lot of pain. We would go shopping, we never left him alone,” she explained, clearly upset at the tragic news:
According to the Fox report, authorities are still investigating the incident.
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