In a chillingly familiar scenario of a child eluding parental supervision, a near-miracle occurred in Mestre, the mainland borough of Venice, on Saturday evening. An 18-month-old boy of Bangladeshi origin fell from a fifth-floor balcony of his family’s apartment building.
The child’s fall was fortuitously broken by a plastic awning which he struck before hitting the ground. His mother was home at the time, caring for him and two other children, while his father was working at a commercial business.
According to initial reconstructions, the toddler circumvented the terrace protections and slipped through the iron bars of the railing, losing his balance and plunging from a height of approximately 15 meters. The accident happened in plain view of many people in the square below, which is home to a large Bengali community.
The courtyard behind the building quickly filled with rescuers, neighbors, and incredulous onlookers, alerted by the mother’s screams. An Suem 118 ambulance arrived promptly on the scene, and its paramedics opted for immediate transport of the child to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Padua Hospital. He was admitted in a guarded condition and is not intubated; doctors have diagnosed a broken leg and are keeping him under observation at least until Monday to evaluate his clinical condition and rule out further injuries.
In a separate incident, a three-year-old Moldovan boy is also not believed to be in life-threatening danger. He was hospitalized at the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in Turin after his father found him at the bottom of a pool at a bed and breakfast in Omegna (Verbano-Cusio-Ossola) where they were staying.
The exact state of the boy’s health will be established in the coming hours. He is presumed to have fallen into the pool while playing with other children. He was resuscitated, though it remains unclear how many minutes he was submerged and in cardiocircolatory arrest. No investigation has been opened into either incident at this time.
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