Children Are Falling From Military Housing Windows. Why Did the Pentagon Change How It Protects Them?
It was Jason English’s job as a Naval intelligence officer to mitigate risk. The work suited him. He felt like he was wired to protect the people and country he loved.
So when he became a father, English cruised the aisles of Home Depot and Babies “R” Us looking for ways to make his house safer. In his home, every outlet was covered, every corner was padded, every drawer had a lock.
But when the family moved into a green-painted house at Aliamanu Military Reservation in Hawaii, there was another danger English hadn’t anticipated: second-story windows fitted with screens designed to keep insects from flying in but not prevent children from falling out.
English’s 4-year-old son, Evan, was a precocious reader who loved superheroes and, in his raspy voice, posed deeply insightful questions after finishing a “Magic School Bus” book. He could already write, and one night, a few weeks before his fifth birthday, he picked up the dry erase marker in his room and wrote: “I love Dada and I love Mommy and I love God.”
The next day, Evan gleefully ate a Spiderman popsicle with his brother, Jason, before running upstairs to look out of the window, falling through its screen.
Jason grabbed bandages and gauze and asked his mother to “fix” his little brother, who lay bleeding on the ground. But she couldn’t. No one could.
In the years that followed, English channeled the devastation of his son’s death into a mission to keep other military families from suffering the same loss.
“It was a crisis, in my mind,” English said after learning that more than 3,300 children under age 5 are hurt in window falls in the United States each year. “A pandemic that needed to be fixed.”
Congress responded in 2017 with Evan’s Law, requiring the Defense Department to install fall-prevention devices on windows of a certain height in military family housing.
This year, the Pentagon changed how it interprets that requirement.
In a memo issued by Dale Marks—assistant secretary of war for energy, installations, and environment—the military modified longstanding policy to allow devices that can be disengaged: devices it previously considered noncompliant with Evan’s Law and that safety experts say may not reliably safeguard children from window falls.
“This new policy clearly contradicts the express terms of the statute,” Rachel VanLandingham, a law professor at Southwestern University and former Air Force judge advocate, wrote in an email to The War Horse. “Shame on [the Department of Defense] … for such gross misrepresentation of the applicable law.”
The Push for Passive Restraint
In advocating for Evan’s Law, English partnered with Jim Graham, executive director of the National Association for Child Window Safety.
A real estate developer by trade, Graham had been a window safety advocate ever since he got a phone call in 2006 about a toddler named Laela Shaugobay, who had fallen four stories from an apartment he had managed.
Laela survived her fall. But Graham felt responsible that the little girl had nearly died because of a safety hazard he could have prevented.
He urged Minnesota lawmakers to pass Laela’s Law, one of the nation’s first child window safety laws. But Graham said the legislation was “immediately watered down because of political cover.”
In Graham’s opinion, manufacturers and builders likely exerted the same pressure on DoD and federal lawmakers as they shaped Evan’s Law, leaving the code open to interpretation on whether it required passive restraint—safety screens or guards that cannot be easily removed or disengaged—or allowed for less expensive window opening control devices, which limit how far a window can open.
Known as WOCDs, these devices can help prevent falls, said Dr. Sadiqa Kendi, an emergency medicine physician and chief medical officer for Safe Kids Worldwide. But passive devices provide more reliable protection.
“Any safety device with passive protection is better than a safety device that has a higher risk of user error and/or has a way to disengage it,” Kendi said.
Even the housing industry has acknowledged that limitation. In a 2022 congressional hearing, Phillip Rizzo, CEO of Liberty Military Housing, testified that children could disengage window opening control devices.
A Reversal on Evan’s Law
In 2019, Congress amended Evan’s Law to be more specific, defining a fall prevention device as “a window screen or guard that complies with applicable standards in ASTM standard F2090-13 (or any successor standard).”
These are mounted devices that use a grid pattern of tubing or screening mesh to fully block a child from going out a window.
“It was very clear,” English said, “and that was the very key point that we tried to make sure the law stated emphatically, because up until that point, the effort by all of the department was trying to allow for WOCDs, and those just don’t work.”
Even so, military housing companies sought clarification in 2024 about whether WOCDs satisfied the law.
The answer from Mark Colón, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for housing, was unequivocal.
“WOCDs do not satisfy the requirements set forth in the text” of U.S. Code, he wrote. “While we understand that the successor ASTM standard (F2090-21) defines ‘fall prevention devices’ more broadly than the statute does, 10 U.S.C. § 2857 only includes window screens and guards in the statutory definition of acceptable fall prevention devices. My office lacks the discretion to expand this statutory definition beyond what Congress has provided.”
The 2026 memo reversed that position.
“Upon further review and consideration, the Department now interprets the statutory requirement … to include window fall prevention devices—such as window opening control devices,” it reads.
Dwight Stirling, a law professor and a judge advocate general who founded the Center for Law and Military Policy, said the new interpretation conflicts with the statute.
“According to federal law … a fall prevention device must be either a window screen or a guard,” he wrote in an email to The War Horse. “No other type of device, including a window opening control device, will do.”
Thousands of Falls Every Year
Nationwide, window falls sent about 5,600 children aged 12 and younger to emergency departments in 2024, and roughly a third of them required hospitalization, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. About 12 children under the age of 10 die each year after falling from windows.
With the passage of Evan’s Law, military housing became subject to stricter window-safety standards than civilian housing in many states.
Even so, 35 military children have been injured since the law was enacted, according to Defense Department reports obtained by The War Horse through a public records request.
A total of five new neighborhoods will be built at Fort Meade, Maryland within the next eight years. Picerne Military Housing is building four different model homes on the military installation. The company will manage and maintain the properties over the next 48 years. Once completed there will a total of 3,170 homes. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample. alt="" class="wp-image-45037" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=1030%2C566&ssl=1 1030w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=400%2C220&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=768%2C422&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=1536%2C844&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=2048%2C1126&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=1200%2C660&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=1024%2C563&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=2000%2C1099&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?resize=780%2C429&ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026.jpg?w=2340&ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/9162026-1030x566.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /> The incidents occurred from Hawaii to Alaska, but more than a third took place at four Naval bases in California, where housing was operated by Liberty Military Housing.
Last summer, two children died after falling from Navy housing in San Diego, the only fatalities reported since Evan’s Law was enacted. Their families are suing Liberty and other contractors, alleging that failures to comply with the law contributed to the deaths.
“Why Are Military Kids Still Falling Out of Windows?”
Becca Keen Cunningham, a parent and preschool teacher in Vancouver, Washington, was shocked when a Navy representative contacted her last year to help prevent child window falls in military housing.
“I knew that Evan’s Law had been passed, and I then assumed that it had been put in place and enforced,” she said. “Why are kids still falling out of windows?”
Keen Cunningham knew the issue because of her own family’s tragedy.
Years earlier, she had put her toddler twins down for a nap at their home. She could hear that Thomas was still awake, quietly playing in his upstairs bedroom.
At some point, Thomas climbed onto a built-in window seat and fell two stories.
Keen Cunningham will always remember finding him on the concrete below, making a faint, frightening moan as he tried to call for his parents. Then his eyes fluttered closed and she feared she was watching her child die.
Thomas spent his fourth birthday in a medically induced coma while doctors worked to preserve his brain function. Five weeks in the hospital turned into a year of rehabilitation and lasting health problems, including partial blindness and epilepsy.
Several years later, Keen Cunningham wrote a book about her family’s experience in hopes of preventing other parents from enduring the same. Now the Navy wanted to use it as part of its window-fall prevention efforts.
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Keen Cunningham was glad to support an awareness campaign. But she didn’t think educating parents should alleviate the military’s legal obligation to install fall prevention devices.
An Air Force spokesperson said the service briefs residents on window-fall prevention upon every move into military housing. A Navy spokesperson said it takes a “coordinated, sustained approach to window safety” that includes videos, social media posts, story time, games, and other activities for parents and children. The Navy called window-fall prevention “an ongoing priority.”
Keen Cunningham said education and awareness are important. But to her, they do not answer the larger question: Why are military families asked to rely on vigilance when the law was intended to require safer windows?
More Than a Million Windows May Still Pose a Threat
The Pentagon declined to say how fully Evan’s Law has been implemented across military housing, saying each military department is responsible for ensuring compliance in its own units.
The Navy reported that, as of August, 69.5% of its approximately 62,000 family housing units were compliant. A spokesperson said the service continues to work with its housing partners in Navy and Marine Corps housing to install required fall prevention devices.
Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Orlandon Howard said the service follows the statute “in practice and policy,” and that the Army “maintains strict oversight protocols and works closely with privatized housing providers to enforce housing safety standards, monitor compliance, and report incidents of window falls.”
He said approximately 25,000 of the Army’s privatized housing units have fall prevention devices installed. That’s less than one-third.
Maj. Gen. Mark E. Bartman (center), Ohio adjutant general, greets campers at Ohio Military Kids Camp Kelleys Island Aug. 10, 2016, at Kelleys Island, Ohio. The program, designed to give children of military service members the opportunity to interact with other military youth and form friendships, is a partnership between The Ohio State University Extension’s 4-H Youth Development Program, the USO and the Ohio National Guard Family Readiness and Warrior Support Program. (Ohio National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Michael Carden) alt="" class="wp-image-45039" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=1030%2C687&ssl=1 1030w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=2000%2C1333&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?resize=780%2C520&ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-scaled.jpg?w=2340&ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/thewarhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2788574-1030x687.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" /> The Air Force says it is fully compliant with Evan’s Law.
But under the Pentagon’s new guidance, the services now count WOCDs as compliant. None of the services provided data showing what percentage of vulnerable windows are protected by a safety screen or guard.
“The implementation of [Evan’s Law] is not comprehensive at all,” English said.
Brian Houlihan, CEO of a company that manufactures custom safety screens designed to cover an entire window and withstand 100 pounds of pressure, said his company has sold between 100,000 and 120,000 screens to military housing providers. Most, he said, went to a company that no longer manages military housing.
Houlihan said he was not aware of another company making a similar product for military housing. Based on his sales and the roughly 200,000 privatized military family housing units nationwide, he estimated that fewer than 10% of vulnerable windows are equipped with such screens.
A Pentagon spokesperson said the department now believes window opening control devices satisfy Evan’s Law because the statute references the safety standard ASTM F2090, which also includes them.
English suspects the Pentagon is taking the path of least resistance: allowing less expensive devices that make it easier for the services and housing partners to declare compliance.
The upfront cost difference can be substantial: Houlihan said his custom-made child safety screens cost between $50 and $100 per window. Some WOCDs sell for less than $10.
A Decision That Hurts
When Evan’s Law passed, “We thought we had a victory,” English said.
The point was to make military housing safer in a way that parents would not have to think about—no matter how tired they were, how many rental homes they had moved through, or how much time they spent away on deployment.
English expected that once Congress passed the law bearing his son’s name, the Defense Department would take ownership of implementing it. He did not expect it to reverse course years later.
English said the change has only made him and other advocates more determined to keep pushing for the military to implement Evan’s Law in the way it was intended.
But the reversal still feels deeply personal.
“To see a full reversal of this, it’s a kink in the legacy of my son,” English said. “It’s a stab in our collective hearts.”
This article from The War Horse was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by Trey Strange, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.
