A LITTLE girl made a desperate attempt to save her two-year-old brother after he opened an upstairs bedroom window while playing and fell out.

Vakaris Martinaitis later died from "devastating" brain injuries after he suffered a skull fracture when he landed on a concrete path outside his home in Co Cork on May 6.

His eight-year-old sister, Agneta, was playing with Vakaris in the upstairs bedroom when she left to collect a teddy.

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The children's father, Vidas, was downstairs cleaning the house in Castleredmond, Midleton, in preparation for Agneta's First Holy Communion the next weekend. His wife, Aukse, was at work.

A Cork coroner's inquest heard when Agneta returned to the bedroom, Vakaris, who was in his pyjamas, was sitting on the interior window ledge and had opened the sash.

"He opened the window and fell out," Agneta told specialist garda interviewers.

"I tried to catch him but I didn't have time. I ran downstairs and told my dad what had happened."

Gda Fergal Whelton said there was no lock on the window and the two-foot sash had an unrestricted opening arc.

The inquest jury, which delivered a verdict of accidental death, urged families to review the safety of window-opening mechanisms and called for the immediate publication of an external audit into the National Ambulance Service's handling of the tragedy.

An ambulance dispatched to the Lithuanian toddler was stood down because HSE call-handlers understood he had sustained only a simple bump.

The dispatcher who handled the emergency call from former All-Ireland hurler Kevin Hennessy and his daughter, Caoimhe – neighbours of the Martinaitis family – said he did not believe life-threatening injuries were involved.

A transcript of the 999 call showed that HSE official Richard Walsh queried whether Vakaris could have fallen from a height.

He was not told the child had fallen from a window.

But Mr Hennessy told dispatchers the child had suffered a nasty fall and was screaming.

A second HSE dispatcher, Tom Magee, assigned the call to the Midleton-based ambulance which had just finished an assignment in Cork city and was returning to Midleton.

It could have been there in 18 minutes but was then stood down because the child's injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

Mr Hennessy later drove the screaming child and his father to Cork University Hospital.

Despite being initially conscious, Vakaris died two days later.

His parents said they took some comfort from the fact their son's organs were donated, and four children benefited from life-saving transplants.

hnews@herald.ie