3-yr-old boy saved by tree after falling from 4th-floor apartment

NEW YORK - A 3-year-old boy survived miraculously after falling from his family’s fourth-story apartment in The Bronx, thanks to the tree branches that saved his life.

According to witnesses and authorities, the kid, son of two city cops, got cushioning from tree limbs after falling.

“I heard someone crying and saw [the mom] and the baby in the back [yard]. The mom was saying, ‘My baby! My baby! My baby!’” the New York Post quoted a next-door neighbour, as saying.

“The mother was hysterical. The baby was in his diaper, bleeding from his mouth …[But] he was crying nice and strong. He was alive. The ambulance got there in time,” added the neighbour.

Witnesses said the boy fell from one of the apartment’s three rear windows on the top floor of the building at 1062 Huntington Ave. in the Schuylerville section.

Two of the windows have guards on them, but the third one- in the parents’ room- doesn’t, revealed one law-enforcement source.

The room is usually locked, but the child managed to get inside and leaned against the window screen and tumbled out, the source said.

State corrections Officer Jay Mandel, who lives in the rear, first-floor apartment, said he rushed to the baby’s aid as soon as he heard “a loud thud” outside.

“I knew what it was immediately,” he said.

Mandel said he found the baby lying in the tall grass with his eyes open.

And the tot was so stunned that he wasn’t crying at first, said the neighbour.

“I was just trying to get him to laugh, to smile, anything. I was saying, ‘Hey, little man, hey, little man, talk to me,’ anything to get him going,” said Mandel.

Mandel said there is a patch of concrete in the back yard near where the baby fell, but miraculously, the tot avoided it.

Officials said the fall was an accident and that the tot’s injuries were not life threatening.

The boy’s parents are housing cops, according to neighbours and a police source.

The baby was taken to Jacobi Hospital for treatment.

Neighbours described the parents as quiet and attentive to their son. (ANI)