Mother throws newborn and toddler out of apartment window in Brooklyn
A distraught Brooklyn mother threw her newborn daughter and her toddler son out an apartment window and jumped out after them on Saturday, police said.
Dejhanay Jarrell, 24, hurled both little ones out their second-floor window on Rockaway Parkway near Winthrop St. in Brownsville at 11:24 a.m., cops said.
Witnesses said Jarrell kept bashing the baby’s head into the concrete after they fell. Both children and their mom were naked.
Jarrell was charged Saturday with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault and two counts of child endangerment, said police.
The 4-week-old baby was in critical condition, and her 2-year-old brother and mother were in stable condition at Brookdale University Hospital, authorities said.
Shandie Harrison, a neighbor, said she ran to the scene in a panic after she heard a child scream and the sound of a boom outside her home.
“We saw the newborn, we started screaming,” said Harrison, 36. “It was three of them naked on the ground, the mom, the newborn baby and another little child.”
Harrison’s brother-in-law, Carl Chin, 41, said he looked out his window and saw the babies lying on the ground.
“I looked up and see the mom completely naked, standing at the edge of the fire escape, and she just leaped off (and) kind of landed on the kids too,” Chin said.
“I just ran outside cause I knew I had to do something.” He also called 911.
Harrison said she saw the mother hold the newborn by the leg and pound her head twice into the ground.
Soon Chin was outside — he jumped over a fence to reach the Jarrell and her newborn. “I had to struggle with her to pull the baby out of her grasp,” he said.
Once he grabbed the baby away, he said, he asked Jarrell what was wrong.
“She actually said, ‘Please take care of my baby, take care of my daughter,’ after throwing them out the window. So there was the sign right there. Mentally she wasn’t stable,” he said.
“It didn’t seem like she was angry at the kids. She was just completely gone,” he said.
“The mom was asking for help. I can see that she was depressed,” said Harrison. “I think that she wanted to kill the baby, but she wasn’t in her right mind.”
Other neighbors rushed outside with blankets to cover the kids before firefighters and an ambulance arrived.
The tiny newborn was bleeding from her ear, while the little boy had bruises on his forehead and his knee but was not crying, Harrison said.
Neighbors recalled seeing Jarrell pushing a stroller in the area and said she apparently lived alone with her little kids.
“I’m just thinking about the baby,” said Harrison, who also is a mother. “I really want the mom to get some serious help.
“We are all females and I don’t want her to be judged. We all go through our depression, our stress and stuff like that,” she said. “Honestly it’s painful and it’s sad. I felt it for her.”
Another neighbor, Kay Graves, 60, also was sympathetic.
“We living in some trying, trying times,” Graves said. “Some people might want to judge her and say this, but nobody don’t know.”
With Elizabeth Keogh
