Father charged after toddler dies in fall from 8th floor window in Brooklyn Center

article

A Brooklyn Center Police Department squad vehicle. (FOX 9)

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (FOX 9) - A father is now facing charges months after a 3-year-old child fell to their death from an eighth-floor apartment window in Brooklyn Center back in May.

What's new?

Saleban Abdullahi Duale, 30, is charged with second-degree manslaughter for the death of the toddler. According to the criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County, Duale was responsible for watching his children at the apartment when the child fell.

Duale was charged via a summons and is not in custody. His listed address is in Texas. The apartment where the child fell belongs to his brother.

What happened?

Brooklyn Center police officers responded to a call at the apartment complex along Summit Drive North off Shingle Creek Parkway and found the child with life-threatening injuries on May 18. The child was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators determined that the child fell from the living room window, which had a couch placed directly in front of it. The charges state that the child had been sitting on the back of the couch in front of the open window. A sibling told police that the child had been pressing on a window screen before falling.

Duale told officers he had been watching the children, but stepped out of the room and the child had fallen when he walked back in. However, statements from the child’s siblings contradict his account, with one sibling stating Duale was lying on a bed in another room at the time of the fall and another saying he had been on his phone all morning and was never in the living room.