"I said, 'Oh God, a baby fell out the window," a neighbor said.
Neighbors came running to help just as soon as they realized the 7-year-old girl had plummeted from the 6th floor window.
It now has a child safety guard on it, but it didn't Wednesday night because the little girl, her step-brother, and stepmother were visiting from Florida.
Their relatives in the Gravesend Houses don't have small children.
"I saw the little girl lying in the grass moving, and the Fire Department, I mean, they were running top speed, hopping the fence," Nickerson said.
Regina Speller was trying her best just to keep the girl calm.
"She said she wanted to go home and I asked her where home is, and she said, Florida," Speller said, "I said, 'You jumped out the window?' and she did say, 'Yes.'"
Police are trying to figure out exactly what happened as they investigate a host of other troubling details.
Investigators now say three illegal drugs were found in the little girl's system; marijuana, methadone, and amphetamines.
They're also trying to determine if the girl had been sexually abused.
"That's horrible, to go from one hell to another, is horrible," said Laura Boston, a neighbor.
"You say she tried three separate times to get up, but she kept falling?" Eyewitness News asked.
"She kept falling back down," said Jimmy Boyd, a neighbor.
Police confirmed that two and a half hours earlier, the little girl was out wandering the streets, as other neighbors looked for her, and eventually called 911.
But shortly afterwards, police say, she was reunited with her stepmom at the apartment and police had no reason for alarm.
Neighbors told Eyewitness News that if the girl was abused they never knew it.
Her stepmom's mother was seemingly genuinely shaken after this happened.
"She was just screaming my God, my God, my God,' and I know her, she's a really nice lady," Nickerson said.
The victim is listed in critical but stable condition at Lutheran Medical Center.