A four-year-old boy is recovering in the hospital with serious injuries after police say he fell from a second-floor window at his Marblehead, Massachusetts, home.
First responders converged at the home on Willow Road around 10:30 p.m. on Friday night.
According to dispatch audio NBC10 Boston reviewed on Broadcastify, police said the boy had fallen approximately 18 feet and landed outside the front of the house. Police reported the boy was breathing, but requested the ambulance “step up” its response to the scene.
On Saturday, a screen was missing from the second-floor window and leaning up against the side of the house. Several neighbors declined to be interviewed, but told NBC10 Boston it was a sad and scary scene.
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Jamie Geneser is emotional every time he hears about an incident of a child falling from a window.
“The first thing that goes through my mind is, ‘Is the child okay?’ The second thing that goes through my mind is I immediately go back to where I was 10 years go,” Geneser said from his home in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday.
A decade ago, Geneser lost his four-year-old daughter, Hannah, after she fell from a second-story window during a family birthday party.
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Wanting to turn the tragedy into something that could help other families across the country, Geneser and his wife started the Hannah Geneser Foundation. The goal of the organization is to prevent accidental deaths and serious injuries to kids.
Every year, window falls account for 5,000 injuries and 12 deaths to children 10 and younger.
Geneser said there a number of safety measures parents can take, including:
- Don’t depend on screens because they can’t handle the weight of a child
- Keep beds and furniture that kids can climb away from windows
- Teach kids to play a safe distance—at least two giant steps—away from windows
- Install window stops or guards to prevent windows from opening all the way
“My heart goes out to those parents,” Geneser said. “The biggest thing I want to let them know is that accidents happen.”
Marblehead police say they are jointly conducting an investigation with Massachusetts State Police. Authorities have not provided an updated condition on the boy as of Saturday night.
