Nobody — not the landlord, not the city, not the county — appears to have done anything about the first two.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A 2-year-old girl fell roughly ten stories from a high-rise apartment building on the 9300 block of Cherry Hill Road in College Park, Thursday night. She was taken to the hospital in critical condition with CPR in progress. She later died.
Her name has not been released. No parent was present at the scene when emergency responders arrived, according to Prince George’s County Police, who are investigating.
That investigation will have a lot to contend with. Because this was not a freak accident at a building with no warning signs. WUSA9, citing Prince George’s County Police, confirmed it was the third time emergency crews have responded to the complex for a report of a child falling — all within less than twelve months.
The First Two Falls
On August 12, 2025, a 3-year-old boy fell from the sixth floor of the same complex on Cherry Hill Road. A witness at the scene told reporters they saw the child fall from a window, missing its screen. The Prince George’s County Fire Department airlifted the boy to Children’s National Hospital with life-threatening injuries.
County Executive Aisha Braveboy responded with a social media post asking residents to keep the child in their prayers and thanking first responders for their efforts.
Then, as far as the public record shows, nothing happened.
On November 26, 2025 — less than four months later — a 2-year-old boy fell from the sixth floor of the same building. That child survived with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. News reports at the time noted, almost as a footnote, that it was the second such incident in less than four months at the same address.
Now there has been a third. This time, the child did not survive. As of publication, Braveboy has issued no public statement — not even a social media post.
The Building
The complex is Seven Springs Apartments, a large mixed high-rise and garden-style property at 9310 Cherry Hill Road managed by ROSS Companies, a Maryland-based property management firm. The building sits less than three miles north of the University of Maryland’s campus and houses a substantial number of families.
Tenant reviews of Seven Springs, available on multiple rental platforms, describe a property in significant disrepair: rodents and roaches; water shutoffs reported as weekly occurrences; a pool reportedly closed since 2023; and hallways that smell of trash. Several reviewers have explicitly called on regulators to intervene. “The government should shut this place down immediately,” reads one. “Ross management is a joke,” reads another.
Those are tenant reviews, not official findings. But they establish that maintenance complaints at this property are not a new phenomenon, and that residents have been raising concerns for some time.
The Oversight Gap
Here is where the accountability story becomes structural rather than individual.
Prince George’s County runs a rental licensing program that includes inspection and enforcement authority over multifamily properties. Seven Springs is not covered by it. College Park is among a specific list of municipalities explicitly carved out of the county’s rental licensing jurisdiction. That means inspection and code enforcement responsibility falls to the City of College Park’s Department of Public Services — a city government with a fraction of the county’s resources.
The city does have inspection authority. Its code enforcement division is authorized to conduct annual inspections of rental properties and to investigate tenant complaints. The city’s Accela Citizen Portal makes licensed property records and permit histories publicly searchable.
A search of that portal on May 8, 2026, returned no active Residential Occupancy Permit for Seven Springs Apartments at 9310 Cherry Hill Road. The City of College Park requires all rental properties to hold a current Residential Occupancy Permit and to undergo annual inspections to ensure compliance with life safety codes. Whether the permit has lapsed, was never filed, or simply does not appear in the portal’s public-facing records is a question the city has not yet answered.
The questions the public record needs to answer are not complicated: After the August 2025 fall, did the City of College Park inspect the building? Did ROSS Companies receive any notice of violation? Did the county or city require any structural or safety modifications — window guards, balcony netting, railing upgrades — as a condition of continued occupancy? Was any follow-up action taken after the November 2025 fall?
If the answer to most or all of those questions is no, then what happened Thursday night is not just a tragedy. It is a foreseeable outcome of a documented pattern that no responsible party appears to have treated as a pattern.
It is also worth noting the political backdrop: Braveboy is currently seeking a full four-year term as county executive, facing four Democratic challengers in a June 23 primary. After the first fall, she posted on social media. After the third — the fatal one — she has said nothing publicly. That is a choice, and it is on the record.
What Should Have Happened
Building codes in Maryland and nationally require balcony and window railings to meet minimum height and gap standards. But code compliance at the time of construction is not the same as ongoing maintenance. Older buildings, in particular, can have railings that passed inspection decades ago and have since degraded — or that met the code of an earlier era but not today’s standards.
More to the point: when two children have already fallen from the same building in the same year, the question is no longer whether the building meets minimum code. The question is whether anyone in authority treated those incidents as evidence of a systemic problem requiring intervention.
The standard tools exist. Window guards — required in New York City for all apartments with children under ten — can be mandated by local ordinance. Balcony safety netting is commercially available and routinely required as a remediation measure after fall incidents in other jurisdictions. Inspection orders can be issued. Licenses can be conditioned or revoked.
None of that requires new law. It requires someone to decide that two children falling from the same building is not a coincidence to be mourned — it is a building condition to be fixed.
Where This Goes
Prince George’s County Police are investigating Thursday’s death. That investigation will presumably examine the immediate circumstances of the fall, including who was supervising the child and how she reached the fall point.
But a police investigation of individual circumstances is not a substitute for a regulatory inquiry into whether the building itself — its railings, its windows, its screens, its balcony configurations — presents a continuing danger to the families living there. Those are separate questions, and they require separate answers from separate agencies.
As of publication, County Executive Aisha Braveboy has issued no public statement.
Sources: Prince George’s County Police Department; WUSA9 (August 12, 2025; November 26, 2025; May 8, 2026); WJLA-ABC7 (August 12, 2025); DC News Now (May 8, 2026); Fox 5 DC (May 8, 2026); NBC Washington (May 8, 2026); @TheDMVLive (X/Twitter, May 8, 2026); Seven Springs Apartments tenant reviews via ApartmentRatings.com and Yelp; City of College Park Accela Citizen Portal (searched May 8, 2026); Prince George’s County DPIE rental licensing jurisdiction list; City of College Park Department of Public Services housing inspection authority; TANTV News, “Braveboy vs. The Field,” April 2026.
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