A 6-year-old girl in Newark, New Jersey, was playing with her friends at home late Monday evening, when the she fell out of an open window of her third-story apartment, according to a statement from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.
The girl was thought to have been jumping on her bed with another child before she fell, a spokeswoman from the prosecutor’s office told NBC New York.
Yodia Encarnacion, who has also been called Yoriani, sustained fatal injuries when she fell from the window at around 11:40 p.m., the statement said. She was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition and pronounced dead several hours later.
Video footage of the scene showed multiple police cars parked in front of a brick apartment building with a maroon awning over the entrance. The area near the building had been roped off with yellow police tape.
The incident remains under investigation, authorities said.
In an interview with NJ.com, the girl’s aunt, Arelis Cedeno, said her family is “devastated.” The family is originally from the Dominican Republic and the girl was an only child who lived with her mother, Cedeno said.
“We’re very sad,” she said.
The Washington Post