A simple wave to her father turned into a terrifying nightmare for a 6-year-old New York City girl when a massive section of bricks suddenly broke loose from a building and came crashing down on her.
The frightening accident unfolded around 7:35 p.m. Thursday, October 22, in the Queens neighborhood of Maspeth, where the little girl was outside with her mother near 59th Street and Maspeth Avenue.
According to family members, the child had stopped to peek through an opening in a fence and wave to her father, who was working at a nearby construction site. Within seconds, a section of brick siding detached from an adjacent garage building and plunged onto the sidewalk, striking the girl.
Her mother, who had been unloading groceries from a vehicle, heard her daughter scream as the bricks came down. The girl’s father also witnessed the horrifying accident from behind the fence.
The impact left the child with a fractured femur, the large bone in her upper leg, and a cut to her head. Emergency responders rushed her to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where she was conscious, alert, and listed in stable condition.
The girl’s mother described the ordeal to ABC7 New York as “a very scary situation,” explaining that her daughter had been caught beneath a heavy section of brickwork. She said the family regularly walks through the area, making the sudden collapse especially unsettling.
Her father told the New York Post that doctors expected his daughter to need surgery to repair the broken bone, possibly using screws to stabilize the injury.
Despite the frightening circumstances, he expressed relief that she had apparently escaped a more serious head injury. He said his daughter was resting in the hospital, occasionally reading and watching television while receiving medication to manage her pain.
Meanwhile, investigators uncovered a troubling detail about the building itself.
The New York City Department of Buildings determined that a section of brick veneer measuring approximately four feet by three feet had broken away from the side of a single-story garage at 59-01 Maspeth Avenue.
Inspectors responded to examine the damaged structure and issued a violation to the property owner for failing to properly maintain the building.
The violation raises questions about whether the dangerous condition could have been identified before the bricks fell. Authorities have not publicly established what caused the facade to detach or whether there had been previous warnings about its condition.
For the girl’s family, however, those questions are secondary to her recovery. Her father said doctors were optimistic about her prognosis, although her broken leg would require treatment and time to heal.
What began as an ordinary evening and a child’s innocent attempt to say hello to her dad ended with an ambulance ride, a hospital stay, and an investigation into how a section of a building could suddenly collapse onto a public sidewalk.
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