New | Toddler plunges to death in freak accident in Shenzhen
The tragic death of a toddler after she fell from the 33rd floor of a residential building has shocked the southern city of Shenzhen as police search for a man who allegedly stole a glass panel in the building, leading to the baby's death.
The Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily reported that the 16-month old was walking home with her father from a neighbour's apartment in the same building, in Shenzhen's Longhua district, when the tragedy happened. The toddler was a few steps ahead of her father and fell from the gap where the glass panel used to be.
The building's CCTV footage showed a man had removed the glass panel around noon, hours before the accident.
The newspaper quoted the victim's family members as saying that the man appeared to be a decoration worker who was working on a home in the same building. He had damaged a glass panel in the home and apparently stolen the glass panel from the 33th-floor corridor instead of buying one.
The property’s management office declined to comment when contacted by phone.
“A piece of glass panel suddenly disappeared from the 33rd-floor corridor, the property management is responsible,” wrote the Weibo user “Yang Jiankun”, who uploaded a photo of the gap where the glass panel used to be.