NEW YORK, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- New York police say a 9-year-old boy with Down syndrome who died while being stuck in a clothing chute may have climbed or fallen into it accidentally.
Frashawn Jones was found dead Tuesday at a Manhattan health care facility, Newsday reported.
Police think Jones got into the chute from the third floor, then got lodged in it and was covered by laundry tossed in by staff or residents.
A police source told the newspaper it appeared the boy suffocated inside the chute, which is about 5 feet wide by 5 feet high. An autopsy was ordered.
Joseph Brown, a spokesman for the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, said Frashawn, whose family lives in Brooklyn, was seen during the morning bed check. At the next bed check, 15 minutes later, he was missing, Brown said.
In 1990, the state Commission on Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled found the center negligent in the 1989 deaths of five patients -- four of them children ages 4 to 17.
Last February, the center's nursing home was found in compliance with state health rules.
