5-year-old Brookline Girl Dies After 4 Story Fall

BROOKLINE, MA — A 5-year-old girl died Monday night after falling four stories from a Beacon Street high rise apartment window, said police.

Lt. Phil Harrington, a police spokesman, said he couldn't remember the last time an incident like this happened in town. He was the first to respond to the call, but said he wasn't at liberty to say whether the girl was breathing when he arrived.

The little girl, who lives in the building, was playing with friends in a friend's apartment before she fell and police got the phone call at 3:32 p.m., he said. A passerby told police they heard noise and went over to investigate and found the little girl and called 911.

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Police said there were adults in the apartment when the girl fell along with the screen that was in the window to a cement patio below.

She was taken to Boston Children's Hospital with injuries police described as serious, before she was declared dead, this evening, said police.

The building's lower floors are made up of medical offices, including The New England Eye Center on the first floor, and Boston Behavior Medicine on the third floor and a dentist. Residential units make up the bulk of the 13 story building. The building is in Coolidge Corner between Park and Webster streets.

John Gillis who has lived in the Beacon Park building for the past 40 years said the windows in the building were in the process of being replaced. A high rise window washing rig was hooked up to the side of the building where the window the child fell from was located. But police could not confirm whether that was part of the cause. The investigation is ongoing.

Massachusetts has had the lowest rate of unintentional child injury deaths in the United States for nearly a
decade. Despite this, injuries remain the leading cause of death among children older than 1 years old, according to a 2016 state report.

Monday evening after the police wrapped up there was just a puddle of water where officials washed the pavement following the girl's fall. A lone medical glove sat in the grass nearby.

Photos by Jenna Fisher/Patch