Anna-Lisa Paul
A five-year-old boy who fell off a fourth-floor balcony minutes after he arrived home from school yesterday, survived after landing in a muddy puddle at the back of the apartment complex.
Sequan Manswell was reportedly peering over the balcony outside his apartment when he fell head-first over the railing.
Manswell, who lives with his mother Jamilia Manswell, had just been dropped off by his driver at Building 21, Maloney, and had been sent up to his apartment by a neighbour on the second floor when the incident occurred around 2.45 pm.
The woman, who later heard noise from the fall, said she thought it was “a fridge falling.”
The woman, who did not want to be named, told Guardian Media the child usually walks up the staircase alone and following the fall, another neighbour had been the one to scoop up the bawling child from the mud.
She said Manswell appeared not to have broken any limbs from the fall and was subsequently hustled into their apartment by his mother after the incident.
Concerned after learning the young mother was not taking the child to hospital, however, the woman said she raised an alarm and informed some men who were liming in the courtyard of the incident.
Following this, the group insisted that the child be taken to the hospital.
One resident subsequently took the mother and child to the Arima Hospital, where an x-ray confirmed he had no broken limbs.
However, Guardian Media was told he was later transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope for further tests after complaining of head pains.
When Guardian media was at the apartment complex yesterday, the mother was still at the hospital with him.
The child’s grandmother was said to be living on the opposite side of the apartment complex.
