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3-Year-Old Girl Dies After Fall From Bathroom Window in Queens

By Jeanmarie Evelly | February 11, 2013 7:59am | Updated on February 11, 2013 2:31pm

QUEENS — The 3-year-old girl who fell from a fifth-floor bathroom window in Woodside Sunday has died, the NYPD said.

Rusroshi Barua fell from the window at 53-01 32nd Ave., where she lived, just after 2:30 p.m. She was taken to Elmhurst Hospital and was pronounced dead a few hours later, police said. 

Rusroshi and her sibling apparently locked themselves inside of a bathroom in their apartment, officials and witnesses said. After discovering the children were trapped, their parents frantically called the building's superintendent.

By the time they opened the door, however, Rusroshi had already fallen, authorities said. The other child was in the bathroom and unharmed, police said.

Neighbors said the girl's mother was inconsolable.

"She was out here screaming," said Marilyn Beck, who lives across the hall from the family.

A man who walked out of the building with the father Monday said the family — immigrants from Bangladesh — were planning a religious service.

A makeshift memorial with a candle, a balloon and a small teddy bear was set up by the gate to the backyard, where the girl had fallen.

"It's a terrible thing," Beck said of the girl's untimely death. "I can't see a 3-year-old getting up to that window unless there was something to stand on, like a stool."

Neighbor Lourdes Liranza, who lives on the fourth floor, said she and family members were collecting donations from others in the building to give to the grieving family.

Police believe the fall was accidental, but cops are still investigating.

According to city records on the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development website, a complaint was filed yesterday at the apartment regarding window guards.

A request for comment from HPD was not immediately returned, but the agency's website says that landlords are required to install guards on all windows in apartments when there is a child who is 10 or younger living there.

City records show the building is owned by Milford House LLC, an entity registered with the state by a Herbert Donner of Adi Management, at 172-90 Highland Ave. in Queens.

A woman who answered the phone for Adi Management said no one in the office was authorized to comment on the incident, or on the building where the girl lived.