After her then two-year-old daughter fell from a window, a 31-year-old mother was not legally acquitted by the Linz Regional Court on Tuesday. The woman had been in the bedroom with the child and must have nodded off. In the meantime, the little girl climbed onto the window sill and fell 13 meters. The child was seriously injured, but according to the mother, he is doing well today.
The woman was pregnant at the time of the accident in May and had lain down a little. The father was in another room. The daughter, who had a fever that day, was with her mother watching cartoon videos on her cell phone. It was not entirely clear whether the window was open at that time. The accused and her husband asserted that it was closed. The two-year-old may have tried to open a window herself before, but never managed to do it. When the woman nodded off, the child fell from the fourth floor, suffering a fractured skull and multiple fractures of the arms. “You have to face it yourself.” “It was our fault, we weren’t careful enough,” said the father who was called as a witness. His wife agreed with this statement. “I don’t know if you always paid enough attention. You have to work that out for yourself,” the judge said. However, he came to the conclusion that there was no gross negligence and acquitted the woman. The verdict is not final because the public prosecutor did not make any statement. A conviction for negligent bodily harm would have threatened up to two years in prison. According to counts by the APA and the Austrian Road Safety Board, there have already been at least 17 cases of falling windows this year, eight of them in Upper Austria alone.
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