A brave 6-year-old girl spent her Christmas Day trying to prevent tragedy by calling 911 to help her lifeless mom in Brooklyn — but the child’s best efforts couldn’t save the woman from what police believe was a fatal drug overdose.
The child also desperately called her older sister, who rushed to the scene of their 46-year-old mother Rashedia Fitch’s apartment in the Kingsborough Houses in Crown Heights, a neighbor recounted.
“The little girl was brave. She was the one who called 911,” said neighbor Mildred Perez, 76, who lives across the hall. “Her little daughter, she’s OK. She was playful. She took care of her. She was very good. She was loved.”
At the scene on Monday around noon, the 6-year-old’s older sister screamed and cried, “What happened to her?” as she tried to push through responding officers, Perez recounted.
Paramedics rushed to apply advanced lifesaving techniques, but Fitch died at the scene.
Officers found two baggies of an unspecified drug near her, police sources said, and though investigators believe she suffered a fatal overdose, the city Medical Examiner will determine her cause of death.
On Tuesday, the door to Fitch’s first-floor apartment was padlocked shut as three prayer candles glowed in the hallway and another half-dozen burned outside the building’s entrance.
“It’s a hard, hurtful, painful thing and this happened on Christmas,” said Lorraine Duncan, 55, Fitch’s aunt. She described Fitch as “strong and brave, just a very strong person, strong minded. She stood strong on different things. she’s strong and brave.”
As for the little girl, “She’s doing pretty good,” Duncan said. “She don’t understand too much, but she’s excellent.”
In a Tuesday Facebook post, Duncan recounted the day her niece was born.
“I was 9 years old [and] sat at the table waiting to see my first-born niece,” she wrote. “When they came in, I was first to pull that blanket back and look at this fat babygirl. She was my new, live babydoll […] I’m gonna miss her.”
Perez described Fitch as a kind-hearted neighbor.
“I was so hurt. She was really nice to me. Really, really nice. I loved the little girl so much,” Perez said.
Fitch had nine children, her neighbor and a family friend told the Daily News.
“I grew up in the same neighborhood. I’m one of her nephews, you could say,” said family friend Jaquan Moore, who grew up with Fitch in the Farragut Houses in Downtown Brooklyn. “She was very outspoken, happy. Very joyful. Life of the party.”
Jaquan’s grandmother died two years ago, and Fitch’s death on Christmas, which also happens to be his birthday, compounded his holiday grief.
“It hit me kind of hard. Yesterday was my birthday and I was thinking about my grandmother and to hear that — I was like, wow.”