Infant Dead After Being Thrown From Bronx Apartment: Police

A 6-month-old baby girl died Thursday afternoon after police and witnesses say her naked mother dangled her from the window of an apartment building in the Bronx before throwing her to the pavement six stories below. 

Crews were called to the building on Tiebout Avenue in Fordham Heights shortly before 2 p.m. after multiple calls to 911, according to the FDNY. ESU had to bang the door down to get to the 27-year-old mother, who was naked and screaming when officers arrived, according to a witness.

"After she threw them out, she was laying on the floor naked," the witness said. "After that she started yelling, 'God help!'"

Authorities say mother Tenisha Fearon, who was emotionally disturbed, threw 6-month-old Janillah Lawrence from a window on the sixth floor. Before that, she was dangling the child and yelling things from the window, witnesses said.

The baby was taken to Saint Barnabus Hospital with traumatic injuries, firefighters said. She died there later in the afternoon, according to police.

Fearon was taken into custody at the scene and later moved to a hospital for evaluation. She was charged with second-degree murder, police said. It wasn't clear if she had an attorney.

Three more of Fearon's children — ages 4, 8 and 10 — were in the apartment at the time the baby went out the window, police said.

This is the third death of a child tossed from a New York apartment since August.

Last month, a newborn girl with her umbilical cord still attached was found dead outside an apartment building in the University Heights section of the borough. Authorities arrested her mother on murder and manslaughter charges, saying she hid her pregnancy and threw the child to her death from a seventh-story window shortly after giving birth.

In August, police arrested a Queens woman in connection with the death of her month-old son. According to court papers, she told authorities an evil spirit had possessed the boy and she was "stopping the pain" when she threw him from the fourth-floor window. Investigators were looking into whether postpartum depression was a factor, but no clinical diagnoses had been made.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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