Yet another toddler falls, but this time a happier ending

A three-year-old toddler, who happens to be the son of two city police officers, tumbled from the family’s apartment window on Monday evening, June 14, at 7 p.m. The long fall came mere days after a high-profile disaster that happened Friday, June 11 when 4-year-old Malachi Johnson fell 23 stories to his death from the terrace of a Co-op City complex on DeKruif Place.

Luckily, this time around there was a happier ending. The child survived the fall with barely a scratch on him, thanks to a skinny tree just under the window that brushed him and eased his fall. The window is in back of an 3-story building at 1060 Huntington Avenue in Throggs Neck. The family’s apartment itself is on the third floor, but the window from which the boy fell was in the back, where it’s four stories to the ground.

Unfortunately, the window from which he fell is the only one of the building’s that does not have guard bars on it. Parents apparently keep the room locked, but forget to this time, and the child fell right through a screen.

“The good thing was… the tree kind of slowed his fall,” Jay Mandel, a neighbor, told the New York Post. Indeed, the child was taken to Jacobi Hospital but was deemed almost completely fine. However, the fall has raised eyebrows about this problem. Councilman Jimmy Vacca, for one, has been concerned about open windows for some time now.

“We can use this moment to remind ourselves that we all need to take precautions if we have young children in the home,” Vacca said about the June 14 accident. “Window guards may not be required in one- and two-family homes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t install them.”

Vacca, along with some other elected officials, is also supporting some new legislation that would require greater protective measures on terrace doors when children under 10 live in an apartment that has a balcony.

“We need to do everything we can to prevent unnecessary tragedies when it comes to our children,” he added.