Nassau cops honored for rescuing 5-year-old hanging out window

The Nassau County Legislature honored two police officers Monday for their rescue of a 5-year-old child who was hanging from a second-floor window in August.

Nassau County Police Officers Patrick Castel and Michael Chiappone were recognized as the Legislative Top Cops of January 2022 for their service.

"Both of these guys are heroes," Nassau County Police Benevolent Association president, Tommy Shevlin said following a presentation at the legislature. "It highlights that police officers don’t just risk their lives every day for safety, they also make split-second decisions for our community and our children."

The two officers responded to a call on Aug. 30 about a young girl hanging out a window in a building on McKee Street near the boundary between Floral Park and North New Hyde Park.

"Preserving life and keeping somebody safe is the upmost importance for us as police officers," Castel told reporters Monday after receiving a citation from the legislature. "When I saw the little girl in the window my first priority was to hopefully, if she did fall, catch her to keep her from being injured."

While Castel stood below the window, Chiappone kicked down the apartment door.

"She was saying to me that she wanted to come down, she wanted to come down to the ground," Castel said. "Obviously in a situation like that, that’s not what we want to happen, we want to safely remove them from the window."

Castel said "luckily my partner was able to arrive quickly and to get upstairs to the second floor to get her out of the apartment."

Chiappone said that saving kids was "what we all signed up for," adding, "Thank God we were there to do it."

Police said the girl had been about 25 feet off the ground and that they discovered the child had been left alone in the apartment.

Newsday previously reported, that according to a relative, the father had been working and the mother had left the child alone to go to a doctor's appointment.

The mother, Monu Patwalia, was initially charged with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, a violation, on Dec. 7, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office.

Patwalia's attorney, Todd Andrew Spodek, said the child had been temporarily removed from the family but has since been returned.