8-Year-Old Boy Killed as Window Crashes Down on Him at Home

An 8-year-old boy trying to climb through a side window of his Santa Ana home was killed Wednesday when the window apparently came crashing down on him, according to reports from police and neighbors.

Police confirmed that a boy had been killed in a freak accident at home in the 900 block of South Flower Street. But with the victim’s parents still being interviewed by investigators, police said they could not provide any details Wednesday night.

The landlord of the house identified the victim as Omar Jimenez, 8, whom she described as an avid soccer fan and and student at Lowell Elementary School in Santa Ana.

The county coroner’s office confirmed his identity and said the boy died of asphyxiation, apparently caused by the weight of the fallen window on his back.

The landlord, Amelia Limone, said she often checked on Omar and sometimes let him into his house with a spare key when his mother or stepfather were away.

On Wednesday afternoon, when the boy did not come to her for a key, Limone said she assumed he had used his own key to let himself into the small house--apparently a converted garage--that Omar’s family rented for $450 a month in the yard just behind Limone’s house.

But late Wednesday afternoon she looked out her window in shock to see Omar’s stepfather, whom she called Roberto, pounding on the side of the house and screaming over and over: “The boy is dead! The boy is dead!”

Landlord’s Account

The victim’s stepfather and his mother, Maria Elena Jimenez, who works at an electronics firm in Irvine, were escorted from the scene in tears early Wednesday evening by police. Limone, basing her comments on discussions after the accident with police and Omar’s parents, said the boy apparently came from summer classes as usual about 2:30 p.m., but must not have had his key. He then apparently tried to get in through a side window, which is about three feet off the ground. That window already was broken, Limone said. It was not immediately clear whether the window glass or the frame itself was broken.

Judging from the location of the body in the window, Limone said that Omar apparently had gotten part way through the window when it came crashing down on his neck or upper torso.

The boy’s stepfather came home around 5:30 p.m., and, after looking around the house and the cluttered yard, discovered the body.

Police, arriving soon after, covered the boy’s body with a white tarp and took him away as about a dozen shocked neighbors looked on.

“We’ve seen him around,” neighbor Pat Lopez said of Omar, adding that he often used to play with other children in the neighborhood.

Limone said Omar, who had a 3-year-old sister, loved to play soccer and, often left alone at the house, sometimes became “mischievous,” playing with a garden house or roughhousing around the yard.