A toddler died after plunging three stories out an unbarred Brooklyn window when his mom left the room for a moment on Wednesday, police said.
The 18-month-old boy, Levi Nemon, tragically fell from the sixth-floor apartment on Crown Street at Albany Avenue in Crown Heights and landed on a balcony at around 11:30 a.m.
Levi’s mother, Sarah, was changing another child’s diaper in the room while the young boy sat in his crib, authorities said.
Sarah went to get another diaper, and when she got back, Levi was climbing out the window. She dashed toward it, but was too late.
Levi landed on the only balcony that has a padded floor, which “put a stop to him falling another 30 feet at least,” said a neighbor, Berel Lipskier, 35.
Hatzolah medical volunteers at first struggled to find the right balcony, but eventually spotted Levi’s red shirt and diaper on a terrace attached to an abandoned apartment.
Using a ladder from the fourth floor, one of the volunteers lowered himself onto the floor below and performed CPR. Levi was rushed to Kings County Hospital, where he was hooked up to a ventilator. But after an hours-long struggle, he was declared dead on Wednesday night.
“It’s just devastating for the parents,” said Mendy Barber, 27, who teaches at the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva next door to the apartment complex. “Something like this happens, it just hits the core, you know?”
The Nemon apartment does not have metal safety bars on the windows — a violation of the city’s health code — which likely would have prevented Levi from falling.
The law requires the management of buildings with more than three units to install window guards in apartments where children under 10 live.
Nearby tenants, a number of whom have young children of their own, emerged from their apartments with looks of horror as rescuers worked quickly to get the unresponsive child into an ambulance.
The management company, Crown Properties, did not return calls for comment.
No charges have been filed against the mother or a baby sitter who was also at the apartment.
Additional reporting by Amanda Lozada and Lia Eustachewich