6-Year-Old Dies After Apparent Accidental Fall From 8th-Floor Balcony in Nashville

He was rushed to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

Published: 5/14/2026, 3:03:34 PM EDT

6-Year-Old Dies After Apparent Accidental Fall From 8th-Floor Balcony in Nashville — A 2017 file image of an emergency sign directing patients to the emergency room at a U.S. hospital. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

A 6-year-old Nashville boy is dead after plummeting more than eight stories from an apartment balcony Tuesday night.

Kingston McWilliams fell from the eighth floor of the 200 E. Webster apartment complex in Madison, plunging 81 feet to the concrete below, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. He was rushed to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

His mother told investigators she had stepped away briefly to another room. When she returned to the living room and couldn't find her son, she searched the apartment and the eighth-floor hallway before looking over the balcony railing and finding him below. She told officers that Kingston had repeatedly tried to climb or lean over the balcony railing and had been warned against doing so multiple times.

Youth Services detectives are continuing to investigate what authorities are calling an apparent, tragic accidental death.

The loss in Nashville is one of several recent incidents across the country in which young children have died or been severely injured after falling from high-rise apartment buildings.

In Prince George's County, Maryland, a child fell 10 floors from the Seven Springs Apartments on the 9300 block of Cherry Hill Road in College Park just after 9 p.m. on May 8. First responders took the child to a nearby hospital, where he died. Police have not publicly identified the child or their family, and no charges are pending, local news station WTOP reported.

What makes the College Park case specifically troubling is that it was not an isolated event at that building. It marked the third time in less than a year that a child had fallen from the same complex, following separate incidents in August 2025 and November 2025.

In New York City, a fast-moving fire tore through a five-story Bronx apartment building on the afternoon of May 12, killing a 1-year-old boy and leaving two other children critically injured. Firefighters responded to the 2600 block of Bainbridge Avenue in the Fordham neighborhood shortly after 3:30 p.m., according to Malcolm Moore, assistant chief of FDNY special operations. Fire crews pulled three children from the flames—a 1-year-old boy, a 6-year-old boy, and twin girls—all of whom were rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

The father of the children, Kwesi Harris, confirmed to CBS News that his infant son, Liam, later died. "I'm just crying," Harris said. "I'm just holding on and being strong because I know my family is supporting me."

Witness Valerie Ndogoula described watching paramedics bring the toddler out of the building. "I couldn't even see his face, and they put him on the ground and tried to pump back to life," she told the outlet. "The way he was covered with all the black stuff, I knew he wasn't going to make it."

Fire officials said open apartment doors likely accelerated the spread of the blaze, with about 80 firefighters responding to the scene. "Close the door," Moore urged at a press conference. "The minute you close that door, you give everyone else in the building an opportunity to flee, and you give yourself more time to flee by not allowing the fire to chase behind you."