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‘I really wish I heard something’: Neighbors reeling after Harlem boy, 10, dies from possible child abuse
The New York Daily News - 3/7/2021
The death of a 10-year-old boy, possibly from ongoing child abuse, left his Harlem neighbors badly shaken.
Cops found the boy with severe bruising, puncture wounds and cuts after his mother and stepdad called 911 at 2:21 p.m. Saturday from their fourth-floor apartment in NYCHA’s Saint Nicholas Houses at 131st St. near Frederick Douglass Blvd., police said.
The boy was soaking wet from a failed attempt to wake him up. Medics rushed him to Harlem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:20 p.m. Doctors told police the boy’s injuries appeared to be from an assault.
Cops were questioning the boy’s mother and stepfather but no charges were immediately in the case. The city Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine the boy’s exact cause of death.
Destiny Rogers, 33, lives down the hall from the doomed boy. She heard shouts coming from the apartment about noon Saturday, more than two hours before the couple called the police.
“I thought he was having an argument with a partner,” Rogers said of the stepdad’s screams. “The only words that I could make out were ‘down’ and ‘calm,’ so I guessed he was trying to tell somebody to relax.”
Rogers said she didn’t know that a young boy lived in the apartment — but regrets she didn’t try to intervene before the child died.
“I wish I stood in the hallway a little longer,” said Rogers. “I would have brought it to my father’s attention, asked him to knock on the door, something. I don’t know. Just to listen out to tell if someone is in distress. That’s the human thing to do.”
Wallace Turner, 32, whose mother lives on the same floor as the boy’s family, said the death came as a wake up call.
“We need to start talking to neighbors. Now I wanna know everything that’s going on on my floor,” he said. “I really wish I did hear something. I would have busted in . . . and defended that kid.”
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