Thu 18 Jul 2024

 

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‘My son died falling 60ft out our window after I asked the council for help’

Exodus Eyob fell from a seventh-floor window in a block of flats in Leeds after his mother said she repeatedly raised concerns. There are fears hundreds of children have died in similar circumstances in recent years

Birikti Berihew would have preferred not to live in a high-rise tower block. It was 2010 when she moved to her seventh-floor flat at Saville Green, Leeds. Her daughter, Reem, was six at the time. Being up high made her anxious; as the years passed, she welcomed more children to her family, boys named Joel (born in 2018) and Exodus (born 2020).

Joel has epilepsy and autism and Exodus was an active toddler. She worried relentlessly about one of them falling out of a window from their home 60ft above ground.

The flat’s windows, without restrictions, opened wide. That left plenty of space for a curious and active small person to accidentally slip out.

When Reem was a child she managed to open a window in their home so wide that it got stuck. The council had to come out and fix it.

As her sons got bigger, Birikti’s worry grew and grew. She claims she repeatedly raised her concerns about the safety of her flat with her housing officer when they visited her home and on numerous trips to her local housing office. She says she would walk there to find someone to talk to because English is not her first language and written communication is a struggle.

Her fears were entirely rational. A few years prior, a six-year-old boy had died after falling from a window in another Leeds City Council-owned social housing flat, in a tower block in the nearby Lincoln Green area.

That boy’s name was Liam Shackleton. He fell to his death from the eighth floor at around 5.15 pm on 31 May, 2011. He was taken to hospital but died shortly afterwards.

At the inquest into Liam’s death, then senior coroner for West Yorkshire, David Hinchliff, wrote to East North East Homes Leeds, one of three Arm’s Length Management Organisations (ALMO) owned by Leeds City Council.

In the letter, seen by i, Mr Hinchliff warned that there should be “more frequent inspections” of windows in high-rise homes, particularly where children live or frequently visit.

Hinchliff also recommended that East North East Homes “consider the feasibility of having fixed and permanent window restrictors fitted so that windows could only be opened to such a width as to prevent a child accidentally falling through”.

In response, East North East Homes, in a letter sent in September 2012, said it was carrying out “annual visits” to “identify children in high-rise homes” and “ensure that windows are safe”.

But it said it was “not a feasible option” to add permanent fixed restrictors to all windows in high-rise homes because of the “impact” it would have on the “everyday lives” of social housing tenants.

Exodus Eyob was 22 months hold when he passed away. ‘He was a very happy boy,’ remembers his mother

Eleven years after the loss of Liam’s life, in Birikti’s home, space was limited and keeping furniture away from windows was easier said than done. More than that, the window restrictor that had been fitted could be easily disengaged by the push of a button which allowed the window to be opened wider, Birikti says.

She claims that despite Mr Hinchliff’s recommendation that permanent window restrictors should be installed in another Leeds City Council-run tower block after Liam’s death, her fears and pleas for more robust fittings in her own flat were ignored.

On the morning of 2 July, 2022, Birikti’s fears became a reality. It was her daughter Reem, 19 years old at the time, who raised the alarm.

Her little brother, Exodus was missing.

“I woke up to go to the toilet and I saw Exodus running around with an orange in his hand,” she explained while sitting next to her mother in their home. “He was excited, as he always was.”

When Reem came out of the toilet, she couldn’t see Exodus anywhere. She knew something was “off”, she says. She could feel it. Exodus was 22 months old at the time. Joel was now four.

“I was asking my mum where he was and checking every single room, but we couldn’t find him,” Reem says, holding back tears.

She suddenly realised that the door of her bedroom was shut, thinking “it must have blown closed from the wind”.

Rushing in, Reem and Birikti found the window gaping, wide open. Reem froze. She started at the window. Birikti jumped on Reem’s bed and looked outside.

“Mum just started screaming,” Reem remembers. “She rushed downstairs to be with Exodus and I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was trying to stay cool, I was like no… he must be in the living room. This can’t be real.”

Reem could hear Birikti’s screams from downstairs. She tried to find her phone. She called an ambulance. “They wanted to know what his pulse was,” she says. “But I was too scared to go and look at him. But then I realised I had to take over because my mum was with Exodus. I had to run down and go to them.”

Once outside, Reem saw Birikti on the floor crying and screaming.

“Exodus looked so lifeless,” Reem says. Her brother was pronounced dead later that day at Leeds General Infirmary at around 2.05pm.

The cause of death was polytrauma – when a person experiences injuries to multiple body parts. It is thought that Exodus had been on the bed next to the window and fell out by accident.

His mother and sister say that Exodus would still be here if permanent window restrictors had been fitted in their home, like Birikti had requested from the council.

In 2022, at the inquest into Exodus’s death, Wakefield Coroner’s Court heard from Birikti’s neighbours. One told how she had twice complained to the council about a faulty window in her own flat. Another said that the windows in their homes opened if the slightest bit of pressure was applied to the latch that kept them closed.

Exodus with mother Birikti, sister Reem and brother Joel

However, in the end, senior coroner Kevin McLoughlin recorded a conclusion of accidental death. He said that Exodus fell because he was “unsupervised for several minutes when a window was open”.

McLoughlin also declined to make a Prevention of Future Deaths report, saying that the window restrictors in the family home were “in working order, legally compliant and free from defect”.

Extra locks were “not the answer”, he concluded, because they would have “duplicated” existing safety measures.

Birikti and Reem reject these findings and are now campaigning for it to be compulsory for local councils to fit permanent restrictors to all windows in high-rise homes.

There are no official statistics which record how many children have died after falling from windows in tower blocks in Britain in recent years. However, Gareth Naylor, director of Inquest law at Leeds-based solicitors Ison Harrison, told i he believes the total could be in the hundreds.

Exodus’s family say they have suffered immeasurably in the years since his death.

“He was a very happy boy,” Birikti says of her son. “Always playing with a toy, always wanting to tickle and be tickled… it was a joy to laugh and play with him.”

Reem struggles to think about her brother without having flashbacks to images of him lying dead on the ground. “He loved reading books,” she says, after pausing to take a breath. “He was his own independent person, he was advanced for his age – he was starting to run and zoom through the rooms in our flat with his brother – our home just wasn’t suitable for them.”

A spokesperson for Leeds City Council told i that their “thoughts remain with Exodus’s family”.

However, they said that the council had worked “hard to communicate relevant advice to residents via our website as well as noticeboards, leaflets, newsletters, text messages and e-mail bulletins.”

“This advice includes information on the correct use of the restrictors and handles which are fitted to windows in all our high-rise residential blocks,” the council added.

A child has been lost. A mother, brother and sister have been left bereft. So, how did the coroner draw such a different conclusion to Exodus’s family?

Naylor is now working with Reem and Birikti to call on the next government to make compulsory window restrictors mandatory in high-rise homes. He told i of how emotional he felt when Birikti “bravely” walked into his office last year looking for help.

“I think so many misunderstandings have taken place in this case,” Naylor explained. “First, I don’t think Leeds City Council’s housing officers properly understood what Birikti was asking for.

“Secondly, the coroner has misunderstood the problem and, unfortunately, implied that Exodus’s family were responsible for his death by leaving him alone in the process.”

In simple terms, Naylor says that permanently fixed restrictors cannot be disengaged and will only ever open to 100mm.

“These restrictors can be bought for a few quid on Amazon,” they’re not expensive. “As the father of an autistic child myself, I have them on the windows in my home. They give me peace of mind. Even with the best will in the world, you cannot always watch your child. People have to go to the toilet. They have to prepare food.”

Naylor says that the restrictors currently in place in most high-rise dwellings in the UK are not permanently fixed. This means they can be “easily disengaged”, allowing windows to be opened “wide enough for a person to fall from the window.”

“Some of society’s most vulnerable people are housed in high-rise buildings and young children are drawn towards the windows when couped up in these tiny spaces,” he adds. “A permanently fixed restrictor completely eradicates the risk of them falling from the window.”

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) already requires that care providers registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), such as care homes and hospitals, fit permanent restrictors which limit window openings to 100mm or less which can “only be disengaged using a special tool or key”.

Naylor argues this requirement could and should “easily be extended to homes in high-rise dwellings”.

Leeds City Council told i they have no record of any complaints being made in relation to the functioning of window restrictor devices in Birikti’s flat. This is something Naylor and Birikti dispute.

The council maintains that there is no legal requirement for local authorities to install window restrictors but it has done so anyway. A spokesperson said these restrictors need to be able to be “manually overridden” to allow “for rapid ventilation of a property via a more widely opened window if needed – for instance, in the event of a fire”.

Naylor said that this simply wasn’t good enough and that it “was not a question of if but when [another child] will die”.

Jason Hill, a fire safety expert with more than 25 years experience, also told i that windows did not need to be able to open wide on higher floors as a means of escape.

He said windows are only really an “alternate means of escape in the event of a fire if you live on the lower floors of a high-rise building where residents are not more than 4.5 metres above ground.”

Exodus’s mother says ‘it was a joy to laugh and play with him’

Hinchliff also made it clear that the potential use of windows as a fire escape in high-rise buildings was not a reason to leave windows without fixed restrictors when he wrote to East North East Homes back in 2012.

“I also appreciate that in lower floors escape from a window in case of fire might be necessary,” he wrote. “Clearly this would not apply on the eighth floor.”

Shortly after Naylor warned of more deaths in his initial interview with i, the news broke that another child had died after falling from a window in their tower block home.

“We have to wait for the full reports into these deaths,” he said. “However, these people appear to have fallen from a height through a window. That’s not possible if there are permanently fixed window restrictors in place.”

On 16 May, 2024, five-year-old Aalim Makail Jibril died after falling from one of the upper floors of Jacobs House in Plaistow, east London. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

An anonymous resident of Jacobs House described the windows as “poor quality”, and while the police are investigating Aalim’s death, they have said it was “not suspicious”. The resident also told the BBC: “The design of the windows on high floors are not good and safe for children.

“You can actually unlatch the windows in the living room, kitchen and one of the bedrooms wide open, which is clearly not meant to be safe. If a latch does break, it will not close properly and it could blow wide open no matter what.”

Newham Council did not respond to i‘s questions about what sort of window restrictors had been installed in the flat that Aalim lived in. However, i understands that the council does install restrictors of some kind in its properties.

A spokesperson said that an internal investigation had been concluded. This included a review of “the history of correspondence between [Aalim’s] family and the council, as well as all details relating to maintenance and repairs”.

A council meeting had been scheduled to take place before an inquest into Aalim’s death began on Wednesday, 26 June.

Tragedy struck again a little over a week after Aalim’s death. A twelve-year-old boy named Renoy Ellis died after falling from his home in the 20-storey-high Ward Point building in Kennington, south London. Renoy died before paramedics could get to him.

Police said that there was “nothing to indicate the incident was suspicious”, although an investigation is under way into Renoy’s death.

Lambeth Council would not comment when asked what sort, if any, window restrictors are installed in its high-rise homes.

A Lambeth Council spokesperson said: “The death of Renoy Ellis is a tragedy for his family and we are extremely sorry for their loss.

“Safety at all our homes is subject to strict regulations which are both adhered to and monitored.”

Until something changes, Naylor fears that more children will die. He warns that “the risk of not installing permanently fixed window restrictors in high-rise homes has been greatly misunderstood”.

“I cannot overstate my concern that there is a significant risk of future deaths,” he concludes. “It’s such an easy fix and it would categorically stop any vulnerable person or child falling from a window in a tower block again.”

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