June 25--Nikia Craine was sitting on a couch with her boyfriend when she heard a thump outside her apartment window, then a woman screaming, "There's a baby on the ground!"
Craine looked out to see a 4-year-old boy, dressed in a long-sleeved sleeper, lying on the grass between cars after falling from a sixth-floor window in the 6500 block of South King Drive around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
"The baby was kind of shaking. It was bad," Craine said. "I called 911. I told them a baby just fell out of the window."
The dispatchers asked Craine to find out if the baby was breathing, so she called out the window and asked a woman and a man who were with the boy. They said he was breathing a little bit, "in and out," and that's what she told the dispatchers.
Paramedics took the boy to Comer Children's Hospital, where he remained in critical condition Thursday, according to the family.
"Luckily he didn't fall on the cars,'' Craine said. "He was between the car and a building."
Craine said she thought the child had fallen from a third-floor window, but she looked up and saw a woman at a sixth-floor window. The woman came downstairs and asked, "Is he dead?"
"Everybody's like, no, he's not dead," Craine said.
Craine said the complex had recently undergone a renovation, including adding screens to the windows.
Craine said she has a 4-year-old son, too. "He's kind of hardheaded, but I had to talk to him and tell him not to go near the window."
Police said the fall appears to be accidental and were investigating.
