Child survives fall from eighth floor

Photo: Eero Vabamägi

A two-year-old child was taken to the Tallinn Children's Hospital's intensive care unit after miraculously surviving a fall from an eighth floor window in Tallinn's Lasnamägi borough a week ago. Neighbors said that while the boy did not break a single bone, he suffered injuries to internal organs.

Witnesses said that Georgi, who is two years and three months old, fell out of the kitchen window at around 11 a.m. The child had taken a chair, opened the window, and fallen out of it. Georgi miraculously landed in a flowerbed merely a meter long in the front of the house.

The accident was witnessed by a resident sitting in his car next to a shop on the building's basement floor. The man called an ambulance and went to find the child's parents. He could not immediately locate the boy's mother, who the neighbors suggested had stepped out, probably to the bathroom.

Mahtra emergency response took the child to the Tallinn Children's Hospital in critical condition.

Neighbors said that the boy did not break a single bone but sustained serious injuries to internal organs. The boy is conscious and his condition is stable. Neighbors who had spoken to Georgi's father expressed hope that the boy will be fine if all goes well.

“I think it will be two or three months and he will run again,” one neighbor said. They added that many of the residents have spent all week worrying for the boy.

“We prayed and were very glad to hear he is alive,” said Tatjana, chairwoman of the apartment association across the street. She also said what happened wasn't the parents' fault. “We have four-room apartments with scores of windows, and it is so easy to open plastic windows. My grandchild is three and does a lot of things like that; all children can accomplish something like that,” she said.

Tatjana has posted a letter of warning in her building, urging parents to make sure children can't open windows.

Neighbors describe Georgi's parents as good people who have always taken good care of their children. “It is a very good family. They have three children. Mother and father are good people. I see the father with the children all the time, he often takes them for walks,” one of the neighbors said. Neighbors said that the father collapsed once he saw the police and ambulance in front of the building and realized what had happened. The incident also came as a major shock to the boy's mother.

The father of the child refused to comment but stressed that the incident was an accident and asked for understanding for the shocked family.

Head of communications at Tallinn Children's Hospital, Tiina Eier, said that the child is currently in the hospital's intensive care unit but that it is not possible to give any further information regarding his condition at this time.

Press representative of the Police and Border Guard Board Marie Aava said that criminal proceedings have been launched to ascertain the circumstances as is customary in cases of severe accidents involving small children.