Mother of autistic boy, five, who died after falling from 15th floor flat as he tried to get a biscuit from a cupboard tells inquest 'he'd still be here if council had done its job properly'

Published: 19:00, 17 August 2026 | Updated: 19:01, 17 August 2026 The mother of an autistic five-year-old boy who died after plunging 15 floors from his family's flat told an inquest her son would still be alive if the council had 'done their job'.  Aalim Ahmed passed away after falling from a kitchen window onto a railing at the bottom of his family's residential block in Plaistow, east London, on May 16, 2024.  The boy's body was discovered by his father a short time later.    At an inquest into Aalim's death at Walthamstow Coroner's Court on Monday, his mother Sahra Osman said she was 'scared' and 'horrified' when Newham Council allocated her the top-floor flat in the Jacobs House block.  The family, which included Aalim, another toddler and Ms Osman's partner, considered the residence unsuitable from the moment they moved in in February 2023.  Ms Osman, who was pregnant at the time, says she was advised by Newham Council to take the flat and file a formal complaint about her safety concerns instead of risking homelessness.  The mother speculated that her five-year-old may have been climbing near the window to grab a biscuit in the moments before he plunged to the ground. She added that Aalim had been diagnosed with autism and had 'no sense of danger'.  The windows in the flat, she says, had 'faulty restrictors' but her efforts to have them fixed led merely to a series of workmen visiting and failing to sort the problem.  Aalim Ahmed died aged five in May 2024 after falling from the top floor of his family's flat in Plaistow, east London The boy's body was discovered by his father a short time later outside the Jacobs House block of flats 'I did everything I could as a mum to help my son,' an emotional Ms Osman told Sandesh Singh, representing the council, at the inquest on Monday.    Aalim's body was identified by his family and his cause of death was listed as multiple injuries due to trauma from a 'fall from height', the inquest heard previously.  Ms Osman continued: 'You guys could have prevented this tragic thing from happening. If you had done your job, he could have been here. 'I think that Newham Council failed me as a mum, as a tenant. I tried everything. I tried to tell them my concerns about safety multiple times and you guys ignored me rather than doing anything about the actual issues. 'I told you my son (Aalim) has autism. I do not know what more I can prove. I showed you a GP letter. The people that knew him sent a letter to the council saying this family need to be moved from this flat because they are not safe.' The court heard she sent an email telling them about Aalim's autism diagnosis and Ms Osman said she also 'believes' she sent a letter about it. Engineers visited the flat to look at repairs, but Ms Osman felt her residence was still unsafe as there were 'open windows'.   All the windows were 'always closed' before the family went to bed but the screams of her toddler shouting 'Aalim', 'window' and 'outside' later alerted the family that something was very wrong. Ms Osman said her partner was at the kitchen window and was 'just crying and screaming in shock' when 'he saw his son's pyjamas' and 'he just could not believe it'. Aalim's father Makail Ahmed told the court the moment was one of 'disbelief – it was a nightmare.' He discovered his son's body after sprinting to the ground floor. Neighbours who had been awoken called 999.   Earlier, Ms Osman said when a window engineer came in January 2024 she tried 'all the windows' in the flat and she could still open them. She wanted a safety device, called a restrictor, on all the windows and noted that the bedroom window could be left 'just open wide', saying: 'I was quite scared and it was unsafe'. The engineer said he would try to fix it, but within a day she had found a window restrictor on the floor. She called the council to complain and begged them to help, telling the inquest: 'The window was wide open, it would not lock, it was hanging', and that she wanted to speak to a manager. She stressed it was a safety issue for her children, but said the council did not treat it as 'an emergency'. Ms Osman added the 'restrictors were not working, they were there for decoration' and she was frustrated as it could take months to get a proper response from the council. The council suggested the engineer was not told of any issues with the restrictor in the kitchen but there were problems in the living room. Ms Osman, however, insisted she had told the workmen there was a problem in all the rooms of the flat and accused the council of 'not taking my situation seriously enough'. She told Mr Singh: 'If you people did your job seriously and done what you should have my son could have been here. It was preventable. 'If the council had done their job my son could have been here.' She denied any suggestion that she may have 'forced' the window open to cope in hot weather. In an introductory comment, assistant coroner Ian Wade said: 'One of the things I bear in mind is the horrendous loss borne by Aalim's family and indeed the community. 'I am very conscious that this should never have happened but how it happened remains to be seen.'