Six-year-old girl dies after falling from 11th-storey Ang Mo Kio flat
She was heard calling for 'daddy' several times before body found at foot of block
She was preparing dinner in the kitchen at about 3pm when she heard a young girl calling for her father by an open window in an 11th-storey flat in the opposite block.
The girl then disappeared from the window but reappeared about an hour later, this time more agitated and screaming: "Daddy! Daddy!"
The girl eventually went back inside, so Ms Letecia, 53, a domestic helper, returned to her cooking.
Then she heard a loud bang.
"I went to look down and the girl was already on the ground. She was lying face down," Ms Letecia told The New Paper yesterday.
The police said they were alerted to a case of unnatural death at about 5.40pm on Tuesday.
A six-year-old girl was found lying motionless at the foot of Block 637 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6, and was pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene.
Mr Maruthappan Sebugan, 30, told TNP that he was working at the Home Improvement Programme office at the ground level of the opposite Block 639 when he heard a crash.
He went outside and saw the girl's body.
The Indian national said he called the police before trying to locate the girl's family by running up to flats with open windows on the sixth and 11th storeys, to no avail.
He later saw a woman, who looked to be in her 40s, turn up at the scene, 10 minutes after the police arrived.
She called out, "My baby, my baby" and tried to touch the body, but the police only allowed her to touch the girl's head before taking her to a nearby shelter, said Mr Maruthappan.
Ms Letecia said she saw police officers consoling a crying woman at the scene at about 6pm.
Neighbours said the little girl had an older brother who is in lower primary.
A neighbour living on the same floor as the family, who wanted to be known only as Ms Chen, told Chinese-language evening daily Lianhe Wanbao that the siblings would often play together downstairs.
The clerk, 50, said the girl's father is Singaporean and her mother is from China.
"The girl would always smile when she met people. She looked like her mother and was very cute," she added.
Other neighbours on the same level told TNP that the family kept a low profile.
"We don't really see them and if we do, we only see them at night," said one neighbour, who declined to be named.
Another said she saw the girl staring out of her bedroom window, which faces the common corridor, at about 5.15pm just before her body was found at the foot of the block.
She said it seemed like no one else was home at the time. The front door was shut and the lights were turned off.
Ms Letecia said the window grilles of the flat were typically shut, but the window and grilles were open that afternoon.
She did not see any adults in the flat from about 3pm, when the girl first appeared at the window, until her body was found.
There was no responose when TNP knocked on the door of the family's flat yesterday.
Said Ms Letecia: "Last night, I couldn't sleep. She is so young, you know. Six years old only."
Police investigations are ongoing.
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