A 15-month-old girl died after being left alone on a balcony at a Roseville apartment building and falling more than two stories, charges filed against her parents say.
Aisha Ali, 30, and Hanad Hassan Jama, 35, face two counts each of second-degree manslaughter in connection with the fall at the apartment in the 2600 block of Lexington Avenue, south of County Road C2, the afternoon of July 6.
They were charged in Ramsey County District Court by summons and have first appearances scheduled for Nov. 5. Attorneys are not listed in their court case files.
The criminal complaints give the following account:
A man called 911 just before 2 p.m. after he and his fiancee saw the girl lying on the driveway outside of the building’s garage. She was unresponsive, with a large and bleeding abrasion to her head.
More than two stories directly above the child was a balcony with vertical metal bars with gaps between them. The balcony’s sliding glass door was partly open, and the screen door was torn and off the track.
As medics treated the toddler, a young child crawled through the safety bars, held onto the outside of the balcony and watched the activity below. Officers yelled for the child to go inside, and eventually the child did but remained by the open door. A woman retrieved the child and went back inside.
Officers went to the apartment, where Ali opened the door. She was with two children, ages 2½ and 5, and called Jama, who arrived several minutes later.
The toddler was transported to the hospital, where Ali told officers she had been taking a shower and believed that Jama was caring for the children. The shower stalls were later found to be completely dry, the complaint says.
She acknowledged that the screen door was off its track and had a small tear, though not as large as the one that officers had seen, the complaint says.
Jama told officers that he had been home a short time earlier. He said Ali told him that she was going to shower and that he told her he was returning to work, then left.
The girl was pronounced dead the day after the fall, with the cause determined to be multiple traumatic injuries.
‘Warned of the danger’
The fiancé of the 911 caller told an investigator that as they waited for first responders, they saw the second child standing by the balcony door, with no adult in sight. She said the balcony’s sliding door and screen had been broken for several months; she said that she noticed it whenever she entered the garage.
A maintenance worker told an investigator that at least three times in the prior year, he had seen children hanging out of the balcony and that their parents had “repeatedly been warned of the danger,” the complaint says.
Building management provided records corroborating the accounts, including a recorded phone call in August 2024, when a staff member told Jama: “You have two small children that are … hanging out of the window … hanging outside of the window above the garage … I don’t want anything to happen to them.”
In another recorded call the next month, a staff member told Ali: “We currently have your, I believe it’s your daughter, hanging out the balcony … over the garage door. … This isn’t the first time, we actually have multiple people and pictures of this, so please make sure this doesn’t happen.”
Follow-up statements
A child protection investigator conducted a follow up interview with the parents. Ali said the children had been watching TV while she prepared to take a shower. When asked about her statement to police that she was showering, she said that she had been confused and distraught. She said Jama had been home and that she assumed he would stay for a while, the complaint says.
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Jama said he had arrived home during a break from work and found the children watching TV. He said he made them lunch, during which time Ali had gone into the bedroom. He said he called out to her that he was leaving — adding he was not certain she heard him — and then left. He said he assumed that she would be present to watch them, the complaint says.
Jama said the reports about the children hanging out of the balcony unsupervised were false. He said the family had repeatedly asked management to fix the screen door. Management denies this, and records show no such requests, the complaint says.
The building’s policy provided to Ali and Jama included the requirement that “windows, blinds and screens damaged or broken in Resident’s unit during residency shall be repaired,” the complaint states.
