Residents at a Bronx apartment building tried desperately to revive an 11-month-old baby girl who died of an apparent drowning amid the screams of her devastated mother, a neighbor told the Daily News on Thursday.
“My baby’s dead! My baby’s dead!” the child’s mother wailed, according to 28-year-old neighbor Frank DeJesus.
DeJesus was inside his fifth-floor apartment on West Farms Road near Boone Ave. in Crotona Park East around 7:40 p.m. Wednesday when he heard screaming and rushed outside to see a neighbor holding little Jezeli Mirabal as her mother, Victoria, wept in the hallway.
“We opened the door and we see that she’s screaming on the floor in the hallway. Our neighbor was holding the baby,” said DeJesus. “The baby was purple.”
DeJesus called 911 and relayed instructions from the operator to neighbors who rushed to the child’s aid.
“Another neighbor came up and he grabbed the baby, and I was on the phone with 911. They were telling me what to do, and I was telling him what to do,” said DeJesus.
“A whole bunch of water comes up, a lot of water came out her mouth,” said DeJesus. “When that happened, I’m thinking ‘Oh we’re actually helping the baby. The baby might be OK.’”
Residents performed CPR on little Jezeli but the child remained unconscious as paramedics arrived to continue the lifesaving maneuver minutes later.
“My son’s mom, Layla, when she first tried doing CPR, she was telling me that the baby was completely cold. A little bit of water came out and still the baby was cold.”
Medics rushed the baby to Lincoln Hospital. She could not be saved.
Jezeli’s mother told police her daughter drowned in the bathtub, law enforcement sources told the Daily News.
But DeJesus said he spoke to a neighbor who said he was helping Jezeli’s mother bring groceries into her apartment just moments before she found the baby unconscious.
“He was telling me when she opened the door, she was putting the food away. He left the cart there and she was grabbing the groceries and was going to give the cart back,” said DeJesus. “Then all the screaming happened.”
“It’s just confusing me,” DeJesus added. “How do you leave the baby in the tub? It don’t make sense at all.”
Police are investigating whether the mother left Jezeli alone in the apartment to run errands, a law enforcement source told the Daily News.
Little Jezeli was a happy and healthy baby girl whose older sisters ages 2 and 4 doted on her, according to a 65-year-old friend of her mother.
“She was a happy baby. She had black curly hair. She had a pretty face. She looked more like her dad.” said the mother’s friend, who asked that her name be withheld. “She has two older sisters and they always played with her. They loved their sister.”
Victoria was a good mother, according to her friend, who described Jezeli’s mom as a loving caretaker who made a horrible mistake.
“She is a good mother. We all make mistakes. She never abused her kids. She was not that type of mother.”
The friend said that both of Jezeli’s sisters were home when the baby was found unconscious and that her eldest sister looked on in horror as paramedics attempted to resuscitate the little girl.
“The older one saw everything,” said the friend. “I told her mother she’s gonna need therapy, because she saw that happen. She was crying. She said ‘My sister! My sister! My baby! My baby!’”
Little Jezeli’s mother now fears law enforcement will hold her responsible for the child’s tragic death, her friend said.
“I spoke to her briefly. She’s scared she’s gonna go to jail,” said her friend. “She’s very scared and she doesn’t want to go to jail.”
The city’s Administration of Children’s Services is assisting in the investigation, police said.
A preliminary search didn’t turn up any domestic violence complaints against the mom involving the children, police sources said. Nor were there any instances when cops were previously called to the address.
An autopsy was slated to confirm how the child died.
No arrests were immediately made.
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