Teen describes moment bricks fell on her after partial house collapse

By Suzanne Le Mignot

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    CHICAGO, Illinois (WBBM) — A 14-year-old girl injured in a partial house collapse is speaking out after she and her friend were walking to a bus stop after school last Thursday when she said she was pummeled by bricks.

D’Mariya Coleman describes the head injury she endured after this house on the 5300 block of W. Grand Avenue partially collapsed on her and a friend last Thursday.

Bricks from the upper level of a home came crashing down on the teens.

“That’s when I, like, I guess, the brick hit me in my head because my vision got all blurry. I didn’t see the bricks at first until, like, my vision came back, and I sat down, and like blood was coming all down from my head and my side,” she said.

She and her father, Dajuan Coleman, shared a video of Coleman being treated for two head wounds in the emergency room at Stroger Hospital.

“My daughter was, like, paranoid, asking me questions like is she gonna make it,” Coleman said, adding that the bricks raining down on her not only left her with scrapes on her arm and leg but constant back pain.

A nurse arrived at the scene and stayed with D’mariya until an ambulance arrived. Her father said he owed that Good Samaritan a debt of gratitude for keeping his daughter calm until help arrived.

“They had CAT scan, and they realized she had a hairline fracture in the back,” he said.

D’Mariya Coleman said she is still in pain.

“My back hurts. Like, I can’t walk around for a lot, and I can’t really bend over, or it’s going to start aching. I can’t lay on my stomach because it also hurts my back, and when I move my shoulder, it also hurts a lot,” she said. “My jaw hurts a lot, like, to open and to eat.”

A police report also details D’Mariya’s friend’s multiple injuries. Among them is a “… broken left hand”. The report also said the building owner told police “…he was in the property earlier in the day and was aware that the property needed to have some structural work completed.”

It also said a City of Chicago building inspector “…deemed the building structurally safe” and was working with the “…property owner to get the building boarded up and secured.”

A Department of Buildings records check shows the property was inspected in 2006, 2007, and 2019 and failed each time. Among the violations are torn, missing, rolled roofing, and missing window casing moldings.

CBS 2 reached out to the building owner, but there’s been no response so far.

The Chicago Department of Buildings said it cited the owner for minor violations in 2019, adding that those issues were unrelated to last week’s collapse.

Coleman said she was the salutatorian at her elementary school and now attends Prosser Career Academy as a sophomore, just yards away from where she and her friend were hurt. She’s also on the cheerleading team and said summer cheer camp won’t happen now.

Her father said he’s just grateful his daughter is alive.

“I’m blessed to have my child and everything, but I just don’t even understand how something like this could even happen,” Coleman said.

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