Baby Survives 4-Floor Plunge
BY LIZ GOFF

The parents of a year-old baby girl are thanking their lucky stars this week after the baby survived a four-story plunge from their Flushing apartment on July 16.

"It's a miracle she survived," said the child's mother, Mariana Caseres, 26.

Cindy Riveros amazed doctors and her parents by walking just hours after she fell from a bedroom window at the family's apartment at 134-36 57th St.

Police said Riveros was playing with a cousin in the bedroom at about 6:30 p.m. when she climbed on a chair and tumbled from the window, in which window guards were not installed.

Eyewitnesses told police the girl fell four floors onto a backyard landing one story below ground level that leads to the building basement.

Police said Riveros was saved by two large, soft rubber balls that someone had left on the landing, and which apparently broke her fall.

Neighbors said the baby "made a lot of noise" when she fell. "There was a lot of blood on the baby," a neighbor said. "She was crying, her mother was crying. It was chaos." Another neighbor drove the baby and her mother to New York Hospital of Queens, where Riveros' condition worsened on Wednesday night. She was rushed in critical condition with a fractured skull to Cornell Medical Center, where doctors operated to determine the extent of her injuries.

The miracle baby was admitted to the hospital intensive care unit, where she shocked doctors and her parents hours later, by "taking a few baby steps", hospital administrators said.

Doctors who operated on Riveros later told her parents she would be just fine.

City officials are investigating to determine if child safety guards had initially been installed on the windows in the family's apartment or if window guards had been installed and later removed by unknown persons.

Under New York City law, landlords are required to install window guards in apartments rented to families with small children.