Mapleton Toddler Ruhshona Kurbonova Drowns In Prospect Park Lake

Tragedy hit a Mapleton family on Saturday after a 2-year-old girl was found drowned in Prospect Park Lake following a five-hour search for the child.

NYPD scuba divers pulled the unconscious and unresponsive body of Ruhshona Kurbonova out of the algae-filled water at approximately 6:00 p.m., to her family’s dismay.

Kurbonova was at the park when she wandered off from the family picnic with a 3-year-old male cousin at approximately 1:10 p.m., according to police. The boy later returned unharmed, but covered in algae.

Kurbonova’s mother, Yulduz, 37, called 911. She told authorities she believe the child may have fallen into the lake.

Police kicked off the five-hour search. While divers took to the lake, police combed the wooded areas around the park and helicopters provided eyes in the sky. At one point, the helicopter reportedly flew low to push aside the thick blanket of algae on the lake.

The city’s medical examiner ruled it an accidental drowning, DNAinfo reports.

The family’s Bensonhurst apartment building at 65th Street and Avenue O became the site for mourning the lost tot, and friends of the family visited the inconsolable mother – who was so overcome with grief that EMS took her from the park on Saturday on a gurney to be evaluated at a local hospital.

The New York Times reports:

The men standing at the sun-soaked intersection, who began gathering Saturday night, said they were adhering to a Muslim practice by keeping their distance from grieving women. Thirty paces away, inside the apartment where Ruhshona had lived with her family, women gripped the girl’s yellow-and-white baby clothes and screamed.

… On Sunday, waves of women wrapped in brightly colored gowns and men wearing a day’s stubble stopped at the corner of 65th Street and Avenue O, carrying food and drink, doing what they could do to offer solace.

In the apartment that morning, the mother had laid her daughter’s favorite dress on a bed, then dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the fabric, the building superintendent, Zada Bacaj, said. The girl’s father, Ms. Bacaj said, had gone to the hospital after telling relatives he did not feel well.

The Daily News writes about a neighbor’s reflection on little Kurbonova and how parents at Prospect Park are reacting:

Ruhshona was the family’s long-awaited girl in a brood that included three boys, according to neighbor Sofiya Krapivina.

“It’s impossible how they must feel,” she said. “It’s impossible to believe it happened.”

The girl, who stood just 2 feet tall, was always smiling and friendly, she added.

… On Sunday, parents were extra careful to watch their children around the algae-filled lake.

“I’m definitely going to keep an eye on them,” said dad Omowale Adewale, 35, as his three kids played near the edge of the water.

Some complained it was hard to tell where the water actually starts due to the murky green gunk coating the water.

“Why does it look like this? A child may not even think it’s water and then they fall in,” asked Paolo Ventura, who visited the park with his 6-year-old son, Primo. Park officials have long battled the potentially hazardous muck, called Azolla caroliniana.

Kurbonova will be flown back to the family’s native country of Uzbekistan for burial, according to reports.