Girl, 6, Hurt by Falling Bricks on Maspeth Avenue in Queens

A 6-year-old girl walking with her mother in Maspeth on Thursday evening was struck by falling bricks and left with a broken leg, according to police, in an episode that has drawn a violation notice from the city’s buildings regulator.

The incident happened at about 7:30 p.m. on Maspeth Avenue near 59th Street, the NYPD said. A section of brick measuring roughly 4 feet by 3 feet came loose from the side of a single-story garage and dropped onto the sidewalk below, the Department of Buildings said in a statement.

The girl was hit as she and her mother passed by. Officers who responded to the scene found her conscious and alert, police said. She had a fractured left thigh bone and a minor cut on the left side of her head. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where officials said she was in stable condition.

The Department of Buildings issued a violation to the owner of the property for what the agency described as “failure to maintain the garage building.” The agency’s statement did not say what caused the brickwork to give way, and the source reporting did not detail the building’s inspection history or any prior complaints.

Gothamist, which first reported the incident, said efforts to reach the property owner were unsuccessful. No response from the owner had been reported as of Saturday, and the outlet did not identify the girl or her mother.

The case is a reminder of a hazard that city officials and residents have long had to reckon with: aging masonry on the edges of the sidewalk, where pedestrians have no way of knowing what is above them. A single-story garage is a modest structure, but a loose section of brick roughly the size of a door’s lower half is more than enough to cause serious injury to a child.

Thursday’s collapse also fell at an hour when sidewalks in many Queens neighborhoods are busy with families heading home or out for dinner, as evenings grow shorter this time of year. The girl and her mother were simply walking along a commercial stretch of Maspeth Avenue when the bricks came down.

A violation from the Department of Buildings is a formal finding that a property owner failed to meet maintenance requirements. The agency’s statement did not specify any penalty, repair deadline or next steps, and it was not clear from the available reporting whether the section of wall had been secured or the sidewalk below it protected after the incident.

The girl’s condition was described as stable, and police gave no indication of further injuries.