Jace Garcia plunged to his death from a Harlem apartment tower on Saturday, with his mom Jayda now suspected of child neglect, the New York Post has revealed. A friend said Sunday that Jayda and his partner Julio Garcia were in a separate room and thought his son was safe playing alone in their living room when a mosquito net broke and he fell onto fifth-floor scaffolding. Jayda has an open allegation against her, dating back to November, but it’s unclear if it’s related to Jayce and no further details about the allegations have yet been released. Meanwhile, Jayce’s father, Julio, has been named in nine different domestic violence reports, and listed as a victim in seven of them. It is unclear if Jayda is the person accused of abusing him, with the pair heard fighting in the run-up to their son’s horrific death. The mum was seen kneeling in agony in the street outside her block of flats, with witnesses saying she cried ‘Baby, baby, he’s up there’, after her son’s tragic death. Jayce Garcia is pictured on a GoFundMe page set up by his aunt to help pay for his funeral expenses This is the torn mosquito net Jayce is believed to have fallen into while playing alone in a room of his parents’ 29th floor apartment in Harlem
The Taino Towers apartment complex on Third Avenue between East 122nd and 123rd Streets Speaking to the Post, Jayce’s grandmother, Cherise Young, told the Post:[The boy’s mom is] he is not doing well at all. It’s not good at all.’ Cherise described the child as a ‘very happy baby’ and added: ‘His mother loved him very much. It was a normal love affair.’ She also said that she only met Jayce’s father on a few occasions.
The Post also reported that Jayce’s parents were in the apartment’s bedroom and thought the child was playing in the living room. When they stopped listening to him, they noticed loose netting over their balcony. It was then that they looked down and made the horrific discovery as they saw their child lying motionless on scaffolding on the fifth floor of the building. Police responded to a 911 call at the Taino Towers apartment complex in Harlem around 11:10 a.m., where they found the toddler on scaffolding on the third floor wearing a diaper and a yellow T-shirt. Heartbreaking drive-by video shows the chaotic scene outside the block of flats and captures a woman falling to her knees next to an ambulance as emergency workers try to comfort her. Neighbors told the Post they heard what sounded like a “boom” and a “thump” when the boy fell. He was taken to Harlem Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The toddler’s distraught mother shouted from the street below, witnesses said. The Post photographed her crying. His father tried to climb the scaffolding to reach the child, witnesses added, but was unsuccessful. A neighbor told The Post that her children heard “a big fight” between adults coming from the 29th-floor balcony, and less than 10 minutes later a “bang” was heard.
The neighbor, who was not named, said the home had a history of domestic violence, although the toddler’s death is being treated as accidental. Police said the child’s death is under “active investigation.” On the GoFundMe page, Jayce is described as a “sweet, innocent kid who has nothing but hugs and smiles.” His aunt wrote: “He loved playing with his race cars and loved being cuddled while watching Disney movies. He was such a bright kid with a huge life ahead of him. He was surrounded by many who loved and adored him.’ The page’s goal is $50,000.
A woman falls to her knees after a three-year-old boy fell from the balcony of a 29th-floor apartment building in New York on Saturday. He was rushed to the hospital where he died “We believe the child got out of a window, but exactly how that happened is under investigation at this time,” a police spokesman told The Associated Press.
The Taino Towers apartment complex is located on Third Avenue between East 122nd and 123rd Streets.
Nidia Cordero, 58, a foster mom who lived on the 34th floor, said her children heard an argument between adults on the 29th floor minutes before the toddler fell.
“When you look out of the porch, you see the baby’s body. He was in his diapers and T-shirt,” Cordero said.
“Then you hear screams,” he added. “I think the mum was screaming and I looked and the baby was on the scaffolding.”
Other neighbors said that while the mother screamed from the street below, the boy’s father “came down crying” and tried to climb the scaffolding to reach the child, but was unsuccessful.
“She was sitting on the ground in her socks,” neighbor Alexander Townsend said of the boy’s mother. “She was screaming, ‘Baby, baby, it’s up there.’
Neighbors say mother was on the ground screaming for her son who had just fallen from a 29th-floor balcony in Harlem Tanjelyn Castro, 33, who lives on the 23rd floor, told The Post she heard a “boom” that sounded like construction.
“It sounded like something very heavy. It sounded like a fabrication,” Castro said. “We just started searching and everyone started coming out of their building.”
“Everyone who was upstairs and looked down saw the little boy in the yellow shirt. He was flat on the scaffolding.’
She then described the frantic scene as neighbors and emergency workers scrambled to reach the child after she
“Everybody that was outside was running, climbing,” Castro added. “Every man you saw was trying to get to the scaffold. It was a lot of feeling.’
Another witness Richard Linares, 36, told the New York Daily News that the toddler was still crying when his son ran to help.
“My boy who was here ran forward. He ran up the scaffold to find the baby. The baby was still crying and breathing when he got there.
“By the time the medics took him down, they had a towel over his face.”
New York law requires owners of buildings with three or more apartments to install window guards if a child age 10 or younger lives there or if a tenant or tenant requests it.
It is unclear if window guards were installed in that particular apartment.
But neighbor Castro told The Post the balconies are about 30 years old and in the process of being replaced.
“We don’t have AC right now,” he added. “They’re all hanging out on the balcony right now, but I can’t tell if it’s one thing or the other.”
Police said the child’s death is under “active investigation” and that authorities are speaking with two people who were inside the apartment when the boy fell.