Singapore— A six-year-old girl was pronounced dead by paramedics in the late afternoon hours of June 4, Tuesday, after having fallen from the eleventh floor of an apartment at Block 637 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6.
Police, who were notified of her death at 5:38 pm, have started with investigations as to her death.
The little girl looked as though she was home alone. Neighbours heard her crying earlier that day, and some had seen her peeking from her window, according to a report from the Straits Times (ST). She and her older brother lived in the flat with her parents, the neighbours also said, and had been seen with her mother in a playground nearby at night.
The ST report said that both the child and her brother were obedient and quiet, according to the neighbors, and got on well with each other.
The family moved into the HDB block apartment eight years before the incident, after they got married. A neighbour reported seeing the parents, both of whom work, bring their son and daughter to primary school and daycare.
One of the neighbours still saw the child at 5:00 that afternoon, staring out of the window which faces the corridor of the building, when the neighbor had alighted from the elevator.
The neighbour had been startled to see the child, but since everything seemed to be all right, she went into her own apartment.
Another neighbor, a domestic helper, told ST she heard the girl crying for her father several times that afternoon. The first time she cried for around 10 minutes at about 3pm. The child could be seen from the kitchen through open window grilles.
The helper, Letecia, said she heard the girl crying again an hour later, as the child looked out the window for her father, and then after 5 pm Letecia heard her crying yet again, while the helper was making dinner.
The little girl could be heard crying, “Daddy, Daddy,” by Letecia.
She also heard a loud sound before the crying abruptly ceased, and when Letecia looked out the window, the little girl was already flat on the ground, unmoving. The helper then immediately asked her employer to call the police.
Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao reported that a half-opened umbrella was seen beside the spot where the little girl lay, which led some of the neighbours to believe she had attempted to use the umbrella as a parachute.
This is not the first time that a young child has fallen from HDB units. In November, a 2-year-old boy also fell 11 floors down from HDB flat in Sengkang Rivervale, but miraculously survived the incident. It is believed that the boy fell from a stool that he uses for brushing his teeth, and then tumbled out of the washing area of the flat. His parents, who were both at home but were asleep when the incident happened, woke up only due to the commotion of the child falling. He was brought to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
In January, a five-year-old boy was killed in a fall after having been locked accidentally in his parents’ eighth floor Woodlands Close office. Authorities believe that the child tried to leave the office through a window. His parents had forgotten that they brought their child with them to work on that day, and since he had fallen asleep when they left, he found himself alone when he woke up. His mother said at that time she thought her child panicked when he woke up and tried to exit the office through the window. / TISG
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