Residents of a quiet Brooklyn block were left stunned Saturday by the news that a seemingly happy 6-year-old girl everyone knew died in her doting parent’s bathtub under mysterious circumstances.
Cops were called to the Elton St. home near Ridgewood Ave. in East New York about 1:30 p.m. Friday, when the child was found unconscious in the tub.
EMS rushed the child to Brookdale University Medical Center, but she was already dead, neighbors said.
“Everybody is shocked when they see the little kid taken out of the house,” neighbor Vincent Abad told the Daily News Saturday. “All my friends saw. They said she was white and the lips purple.”
The child’s name wasn’t immediately released. Neighbors saw her father jump into the ambulance with his daughter before it sped off to the hospital.
A few moments later, cops removed the child’s mother from the home.
“I said, ‘Oh that’s the mother,’” Abad, 43, recalled. “[She was] walking normally with two police side-by-side. That’s it.”
Cops questioned the mother, bot no charges were immediately filed. Detectives were awaiting the results of an autopsy before they proceed further.
According to a police source, the death is considered suspicious.
A doormat outside the victim’s basement apartment reads “Trying my very best.”
The little girl always seemed happy as she went off to school each morning, residents said.
“She’s happy. She’s cute,” longtime neighbor Gina Khau, 72, said. “I see they happy. I see the mother love the girl so much.”
Khau said the little girl was slight, but didn’t think she was abused or malnourished.
“She OK but she tiny,” the senior recalled. “And she’s skinny. She’s a small girl.”
Neighbors said both the mother and father, a manager at a nearby Bravo Supermarket, took the child to school.
“I never see fighting outside … nothing like that,” Abad said. “That’s why everybody shocked.”
A supermarket co-worker said the girl’s father was supposed to work Friday afternoon, but sent him a haunting text instead.
“He just sent a message around 4 p.m. telling me someone murdered his daughter,” co-worker Emmanuel Pichardo, 42, said. “He didn’t say who.
“He asked for a miracle,” Pichardo said.
The father returned to the apartment Saturday with his brother, but wouldn’t speak to the press.
“I don’t even have the strength to talk to you right now. I don’t even know what to say,” his brother said. “Respect our privacy. We’ll be back another day.”
But the child’s uncle departed with a cryptic comment when he was told how happy his brother’s family appeared to their neighbors.
“Sometimes it doesn’t seem the way it is, but it is what it is,” he said vaguely. “I don’t want to talk about anything.”
Neighbors recalled seeing police at the apartment a week before the girl’s death, but didn’t know why they were there. An email to the NYPD about the prior visit wasn’t immediately returned.