Photo Courtesy of New York Post
A family in Manhattan is grieving after a three-year-old boy died last weekend after falling from a high-rise building, police said.
The toddler, identified as Jayce Garcia, appeared to have fallen from the balcony window on Saturday, June 2 and landed on third-floor scaffolding of the Taino Towers near East 122nd Street and 3rd Avenue in East Harlem, The New York Post reported.
Law enforcement officers responded to the apartment building after 11 a.m., collecting statements from anyone who may have witnessed the horrifying incident.
Several neighbors and witnesses described hearing a “boom” or a “thump,” initially thinking it was construction workers making long-overdue improvements to the building.
“It sounded like something really heavy. It sounded like construction,” Tanjelyn Castro told the New York Post. She lives on the 23rd floor at Taino Towers.
She continued, “We just started looking, and everybody started coming out of their building,” she said.
“Everybody that were upstairs that could see down saw the little boy with the yellow shirt. He was flat in the scaffolding.”
One neighbor, 25-year-old Alexander Townsend, recalled Garcia’s mother, Jayda, 30, being outside as she screamed for help.
“She was sitting on the ground in her socks. She was screaming, ‘My baby, my baby, he is up there,’” he said.
The child’s father, Julio, 24, “ran downstairs crying” as he attempted to climb onto the scaffolding to rescue his son. However, he was unable to reach him.
First responders rushed Garcia to Harlem hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:31 a.m., police said.
Police confirmed in a preliminary report that the child’s fall was accidental. In addition, investigators believe the three-year-old boy may have walked out to the balcony and used a chair to peek outside the window when he fell onto the scaffolding.
According to investigators, the parents said they were in the bedroom and stopped to check on their son after they didn’t hear him playing in the living room.
Jayda said she looked for Garcia and spotted him lying on the scaffolding over 20 floors below the Taino Towers apartment complex.
Nidia Cordero, 58, told the outlet that her foster children heard the young boy’s parents fighting from their 29th-floor balcony.
“When you look out the terrace, you see the baby’s body. He was in his diapers and T-shirt,” said Cordero, who lives on the 34th floor.
“Then you hear screams,” she said. “I think the mom was screaming, and I looked, and the baby was in the scaffolding.”
Cordero recalled seeing the child on the elevator with his father, stating that he always looked “withdrawn.” She suggested that the young boy’s demeanor may have resulted from domestic violence issues in the home.
In November, Jayda had an open charge against her for endangering the welfare of a child. Meanwhile, Julio was mentioned in nine separate domestic violence cases, per The Post. However, it’s not clear what role he may have played in those cases.
The NYPD said the investigation is ongoing.