Boy Survives Three-Story Fall With Just a Bump on the Head

To young Jorge Rodriquez, it’s almost as if it never happened.

After falling three stories Wednesday from a window at his family’s Santa Ana apartment and landing on his head, the 3-year-old gently rubbed a quarter-sized bump on his sturdy scalp and said: “It hurts just a little.”

Jorge was accidentally pushed by his 6-year-old cousin while trying to retrieve a ball they had been playing with. He remembers falling head first through the window screen and winding up on the sidewalk below. He sat upright and screamed for his mother.

Lorenia Torres-Rodriquez heard her son’s wails and immediately thought the worst.

“I was afraid he was going to die,” she said Friday at UCI Medical Center where Jorge was still undergoing tests. “I was sure he would at least have brain damage, but he’s fine.”

Medical center doctors agree. According to trauma specialist Dr. Antoine Kazzi, the fact that the 35-pound toddler emerged from his fall with nothing more than a bump and some minor bruises was a fluke.

More than half of the children nationwide between the ages of 1 and 4 who are involved in a major fall die as a result, Kazzi said. Of the nearly 2,500 children who died nationwide last year from some kind of physical blow, most had suffered head injuries, he said.

“Kids usually can’t tell you that they are hurting,” he said. “So it’s very important to watch them carefully.”

But, if a child shows little signs of permanent damage soon after his accident, it’s very unlikely that long-term problems will appear, Kazzi said.

In Jorge’s case, the only sign that anything happened at all reveals itself when he sleeps, said his father, Jorge Rodriquez Sr.

“Sometimes, he flinches as if he is trying to protect himself,” he said. “It’s as if he is reliving the fall.”

Even that, said Kazzi, is a normal response that will wear off in a few months.

There’s another sign that Jorge has not yet gotten over his accident, his mother said. When his young cousin and playmate, Jessica Calderon, called the hospital to check on his condition, Jorge had only one thing to say to her: “You owe me an apology.”