An Ohio woman was arraigned Friday on charges that she dropped a 2-year-old girl from a second-story window in Beaver County to "teach her a lesson," leaving the girl in critical condition with a head injury, police said.

Terra J. Hill, 27, of East Liverpool, was charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of children for dropping Alizae Mosconi during a get-together at a New Brighton apartment complex. Alizae's mother, Elizabeth Newman of Rochester, had taken her to the apartment complex for a family gathering, though it was not clear whether she was related to Ms. Hill. She said she went to the bathroom without the girl.

 When she came out, "everyone's looking for her," she told KDKA-TV on Thursday, still wearing a T-shirt bloodied from holding her daughter after she fell. The boyfriend of Ms. Newman's cousin found the girl outside on the sidewalk at around 8:30 p.m., crying and bleeding heavily from the left side of her head. She had fallen from the hallway window, landing 7 feet from the building.

A blood stain marked where she hit the sidewalk. According to a criminal complaint, police arrived to find the girl crying in her mother's arms. She was later transported to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC in critical condition. Another woman at the gathering told officers that Ms. Hill was the last adult seen with the girl. Ms. Hill was taken to the New Brighton police station, where she gave officers several accounts of how the girl fell, first telling them that she had left her alone in the hallway and did not know what had happened to her. She then changed her story, telling her a 6-year-old child, whose name was not given, had put the girl on the ledge and that her son Gabriel bumped the two of them, causing Alizae to fall. When police countered that a 6-year-old couldn't lift a toddler to a window ledge 3 feet off the ground, she admitted she was lying. She then told them she had taken Alizae to the window and that the girl was kneeling on the ledge "looking at a small animal outside" when she accidentally dropped the toddler out the window.

When police asked her about scratches on her arm, she told them someone had thrown a shoe at her. Police again challenged this version of events. "She was told those marks were not caused by a shoe," police said in the complaint. She finally admitted that she had been playing in the hallway with Alizae and her son when Alizae hit her in the face with a ball. She grabbed Alizae and dangled her out the window "to teach her a lesson," police said.

The girl yelled for help, Ms. Hill told police, and scratched her on the arm. "[Ms. Hill] then let her go and she fell on the sidewalk," police said in the complaint. Ms. Hill then walked back into the apartment "and acted like nothing happened." "It's beyond my mind. I don't know how anybody could do this," Charles Mosconi, Alizae's father, told KDKA. "There's nothing a 2-year-old could do for this to happen." New Brighton police Chief Charles Vanfossan said the mother will not be charged.

"There were multiple adults and children in the hallway," he said. "There wasn't any neglect on the mother's part, especially if you feel you're amongst friends." Ms. Hill was arraigned at 6 a.m. Friday before District Judge Douglas Loughner in Beaver Falls, who set her bail at $25,000. She was being held at the Beaver County Jail Friday, unable to post bail, according to court records.