HOLYOKE, MA (WGGB/WSHM) -- A three-year-old girl fell from a thirds-floor window Sunday evening while police officers stood in the hallway outside her family’s apartment.

Police were called to the building on South Canal Street around 6:45 p.m. after reports of someone throwing property out of a window. Officers knocked on the door and could hear children’s music playing inside, but nobody answered.

While officers stood in the hallway, the three-year-old fell from a window above them. The child was rushed to a local hospital and condition, as of Monday afternoon, was not known. However, Monday morning, police described the injuries as serious.

Officers found what Holyoke Police Chief Brian Keenan described as squalid conditions inside the apartment. Dog waste reportedly covered the floors and an animal appeared neglected. Holyoke Animal Control was called to rescue the dog.

The child’s father was arrested for a restraining order violation. Keenan said more serious charges are being considered. “Reckless endangerment of a child is something that could be pending and ultimately, we’ll bring that to the clerk’s office whenever they decide to charge them with,” he explained.

The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families is now investigating.

Keenan added there was no screen on the window and the child was clearly unsupervised. “A message to parents is make sure that your children are being watched and make sure there’s screens on your windows,” he noted. “When we get to this time of year, where it gets warm up, folks tend to unlock their windows and open them, but you have to have screens and you have to keep an eye on your children. The child clearly was unsupervised.”

The incident raises a question Massachusetts lawmakers tried to answer in 2017. State Senator Mark Montigny filed a bill that would have required landlords to install window guards when a child under 10 lives in the unit at no cost to the tenant. That bill never passed.

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