10-Month-Old Boy Survives 3-Story Fall In Gary
Updated 07/18/12 - 9:27 p.m.
GARY, Ind. (CBS) -- A 10-month-old boy from Gary, Ind., is lucky to be alive. Somehow he survived a 35-foot fall after a window screen came loose in his family's third-floor apartment.
CBS 2's Mike Parker reports Kyan Powell's family thought he was asleep Tuesday morning, but he wasn't.
Up in his family's apartment, a window screen gave way and the baby plunged to the hard earth below. A downstairs neighbor heard the thump and the baby's cries.
"So I just ran outside and saw him on the ground," says Angela Stewart. "His mouth was kind of bloody. The window was open, the blinds were open, and the screen was laying there. So I assumed that he had fallen."
Neighbors called 911 and notified his mother's upstairs. Kyan was taken first to a Gary hospital then transferred to Comer Children's Hospital in Chicago. Amazingly, except for a small liver laceration, his mother Tiesha Powell says he had no serious injuries.
"He's fine under the circumstances," she said. "I call him my miracle baby."
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, on average, 3,700 children are injured in window falls every year; nine of them die. Preschoolers are at the highest risk.
Stewart said she is amazed that Kyan survived.
"It is a long drop," she says. "I'm an adult and I wouldn't want to drop from that high."
As she cradled Kyan in her arms at the hospital, his mother said, "He's always precious to me from the day I had him. Now this just makes him even more precious, because it just makes me value him even more."
Safety experts said parents should install window safety guards and move furniture, especially cribs and beds away from windows. They should open windows only from the top. Parents must also have serious talks with their kids about window safety.
