Drowning Death of 11-Month-Old Girl in the Bronx Is Ruled a Homicide

The finding in the case of Jazeli Mirabal is the third death of an infant in New York City over the summer to be labeled a homicide this month.

The drowning death of an 11-month-old girl in the Bronx this past summer has been ruled a homicide by the New York City medical examiner’s office, officials said on Friday.

Police officers found the girl, Jazeli Mirabal, unconscious and unresponsive at a home in the Crotona Park East neighborhood on the evening of Aug. 14, officials said. She was taken to Lincoln Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, officials said.

The medical examiner determined that drowning was the cause of death, Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for the office, said on Friday. No arrests had been made and the investigation was continuing, the police said.

The death is the third of an infant to have occurred over the summer in the city and been labeled a homicide this month, and the medical examiner’s ruling comes amid a string of deaths of very young children from abandonment, neglect or abuse.

On Thursday, the August death of a 4-month-old boy in the Bronx was ruled a homicide caused by acute cocaine intoxication. A week before that, the police said that another infant’s death had been deemed a homicide. That child, 1-month-old Joseph Heben Jr., had arrived malnourished at a Staten Island hospital in July, prompting employees to call the police.

That three infant deaths had been ruled homicides months after the fact did not reflect an effort to reinvestigate such deaths and was most likely a coincidence, said Stephanie Gendell, a spokeswoman for the city’s child-welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services.

Ms. Bolcer said it could take months for the medical examiner’s office to complete its investigations, and “it so happens that we have finalized these cases this week.”

A.C.S. investigates any child fatalities involving allegations of neglect or abuse, Ms. Gendell said, and in Jazeli’s case, it was coordinating its efforts with the police and the medical examiner. She declined to say whether Jazeli’s family had a history with the agency.

In August, a neighbor, Frank DeJesus, told The Daily News that after hearing Jazeli’s mother scream, he had opened his door to find another neighbor holding the girl in a hallway of their West Farms Road apartment building.

Neighbors, Mr. DeJesus said, had performed CPR on the child, who was purple and cold to the touch.