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Backyard wall collapses and kills six-year-old Homewood girl
Monday, August 23, 1999 By Steve Levin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A 6-year-old Homewood girl died yesterday after a retaining wall next to her back yard fell on her.
Police said the 4-foot-high concrete-block wall topped with red bricks collapsed on Aundria Spruill sometime around 1 p.m., crushing her.
Neighbors pulled the girl from beneath the wall, but she died a short time later at Children's Hospital.
With just a small patch of grass in her own Kelly Street back yard to play in, neighbors said Aundria often used the retaining wall in the back yard of the abandoned house next door as a diversion. The wall's 8-inch-thick concrete blocks afforded good toeholds, and the red bricks on top were easy for her to grab.
On most Sundays, they said, the girl was with her mother at church. Yesterday, her 16-year-old sister was baby-sitting her.
Aundria "played back there every day," said Tranny Reid, a neighbor who helped pull the child from beneath the fallen wall. "I heard the wall fall and then I heard the sister scream."
"The whole wall fell on top of her. I couldn't see her," Reid said.
Reid said he and a friend lifted the wall off the girl's head and legs. She was carried through the narrow alley separating the two homes and onto her front porch at 7630 Kelly St. Reid said the girl was unconscious.
The Spruill family was not available for comment. According to Allegheny County records, Donna Spruill owns the abandoned house. Her relationship to the girl could not be determined last night.
Late yesterday afternoon, as friends and relatives gathered inside the three-story Spruill home, Aundria's left tennis shoe remained outside next to the toppled wall, along with yellow police tape and several pools of blood.
The Coroner's Office has scheduled an autopsy for today.
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