A five-year-old girl died after a stone fence came down and crushed her in a freak accident in Brooklyn on Aug. 29.
Alysson Pinto-Chaumana together with her mother, Maira Lorena Chaumana, were visiting her uncle who lives in the third-floor apartment on 444 Harman Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at 9:00 p.m.
Surveillance video shows little Alysson walking up to the marble construction when it suddenly gives way and falls on her. The next moment we see her mom picking her up from the rubble and looking for help.
“I look to the side and then I see her fall back and was crushed — her whole head was crushed,” Chaumana told Telemundo. “I grabbed her desperately, my daughter. I said ‘My love, my life’ and I ran, and thank God there was an ambulance on the corner. I didn’t know why they were there, but I ran with her in my arms like a desperate mother, all bloody.”
The ambulance rushed the baby to Wyckoff Hospital, but Alysson had already died from severe brain trauma.
Devastated family and friends gathered in front of the Bushwick house on Friday night to mourn.
“The baby did not climb on it, it just fell down,” landlord Harry Netchandra, who lives on the first floor told ABC News. “It’s very hard to believe how the fence can drop like that.”
“We have no idea how it happened, everyone we’ve talked to, said it was sturdy,” said Donna, another member of the Netchandra family. “We would lean on it and everything. It’s just something that happened, an accident. We feel horrible. We feel terrible. We saw the stepfather last night after it happened and we hugged and everything,” Daily News reported.
Alysson Pinto-Chaumana (GoFundMe)
According to Allyson’s father, Edgar Pinto the fence was not secured and an investigation should be launched. And those responsible should be held accountable.
“All work needs to pass an inspection and I don’t know how this managed to pass,” he said through tears. “There is nothing to hold it in, no screws or no cement,” Pinto told Telemundo.
The Department of Buildings said no permit is needed for building a fence under 6 feet high and no violations were suspected.
A GoFundMe has been launched to cover the funeral expenses.
Freak accidents involving little children are, unfortunately, not uncommon. In February The Epoch Times reported on another tragedy that occurred in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia 4-Year-Old Killed in Freak ‘Picture Frame’ Accident
A 4-year-old Philadelphia boy was killed when a glass picture frame fell at his home, puncturing the child’s abdomen with a shard of glass, authorities said.
The boy, whom police identified as Adrian Ortega, was playing upstairs with his sister at his Northern Philadelphia home on the evening of Feb. 20, news station WPVI reported when the glass frame came loose.
Amanda Velez, the boy’s mother, told ABC6 that she heard a crash upstairs, followed by her boy’s screams.
“In a matter of seconds, I’m using the restroom, I hear a loud bang, and I heard glass shatter, and I heard my youngest daughter, who’s 2 years old she was screaming,” Velez told NBC10 in an interview on Feb. 21.
“I heard my son say, ‘Mommy,’” she told NBC10, adding that when she took him into her arms, “I saw blood.”
“When I went to lay him down his eyes started rolling behind his head,” Velez told ABC6.
“He received a puncture or cut to his abdomen and that’s when family members transported him to St. Christopher’s Hospital,” Philadelphia police Chief Inspector Scott Small told WPVI.
“They tried to do everything,” she told NBC10. “They said they were trying to stabilize him, so he could go to the surgery room. But he wasn’t strong enough.”
Adrian Ortega was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The family has set up a GoFundMe page to assist with funeral costs.
Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek contributed to this report
