Roseville parents charged with manslaughter after toddler falls from balcony, dies
By WCCO Staff
Click here for updates on this story
MINNESOTA (WCCO) — Two people from Roseville each face manslaughter charges after their 15-month-old girl fell from the balcony of their apartment and died earlier this summer.
The parents were each charged with two counts of second-degree manslaughter.
The criminal complaint says that a woman at the apartment on Lexington Avenue North called police around 2 p.m. on July 6 to report that the child had fallen.
Documents describe a balcony at least two floors above, with vertical metal bars with gaps between them. A sliding glass door leading to the balcony was partially open and there was a large tear in the screen. The fiancée of the woman who called police reported that the sliding door and screen had been broken for several months.
While authorities were providing aid to the girl, they noticed a second child crawl through the bars on the balcony and hold onto the outside. The complaint says that officers yelled at the child to go back inside and eventually a woman came out to retrieve the child and went back into the apartment.
The girl was pronounced dead a day after the fall.
In a follow-up interview with a child protection investigator, the 30-year-old woman said the children were watching TV while she was getting ready to take a shower. She said their father was home and assumed he would stay for a while.
The father, 35, told the investigator he had arrived home to find the kids watch TV and made them lunch. He told their mother he was leaving and assumed she would watch them, the complaint says.
According to the charges, a maintenance employee had repeatedly warned the couple that he had seen children hanging out of the balcony and warned them of the danger.
The father denied the reports of the children hanging out of the balcony, documents state. He also said the family had asked management to fix the screen door multiple times, though records show no requests.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.