A two-year-old girl died after falling from an 11th-floor flat in Santiago while her father allegedly slept off a drinking session. Jorge Jose Francisco Constanzo Chavez has been charged
A two-year-old girl plunged to her death from an 11th-floor flat while her father allegedly slept off a heavy drinking session.
Little Isidora Constanzo tragically died while under her father’s care during a scheduled visit. Her dad, Jorge José Francisco Constanzo Chávez, was sleeping in another room with his partner after consuming alcohol heavily the night before and earlier that day.
According to reports, he had been out partying on Saturday night until around 6am on Sunday morning (May 18). He then went to collect his daughter from his ex-partner’s home for his 10am to 6pm visitation, but arrived nearly an hour late.
Jorge then had lunch with his girlfriend and child where he allegedly consumed alcohol again. After returning to his flat in the Chilean capital Santiago, the pair fell into a deep sleep and reportedly left little Isidora unsupervised.
She tumbled from a bedroom window that had no safety mesh and was left open, according to reports. A neighbour heard a “particular impact” around 5.10pm and spotted the child on the ground in the car park below.
The emergency services arrived swiftly, but Isidora was declared dead at the scene at 5.23pm from multiple injuries caused by the fall. Officers struggled to identify the flat because the child didn’t live there.
They were forced to conduct a floor-by-floor search of the building to find where she had fallen from. They finally roused the father, who was visibly drunk, some 40 minutes after the incident. He has been charged with homicide by omission, due to extreme negligence, by the prosecutors.
The window was missing necessary safety measures that had reportedly been agreed upon with the mother, and the father failed to secure it despite being aware of the risks.
The custody agreement specifically required the father to fit a safety net, a condition he agreed to during family court mediation sessions.
Prosecutor Pamela Valdés told the court that the risks were “avoidable” and that the father “should have left the window closed with the latch”. She pointed out that the design of the window made it impossible for the toddler to have opened it herself.
Initially, the father was detained for identification purposes along with his partner before being formally arrested. Following a court hearing, as reported by NeedToKnow, he was remanded in preventive prison.
Isidora’s mother, Gloria Ortiz, has spoken about the heartbreaking loss, stating that no parent should have to bury a child.
The police have stated they will investigate the level of alcohol consumption during the celebration that reportedly started on Saturday night and continued into Sunday.
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