NEW YORK—Four people were injured in Central Park on Tuesday morning when a giant elm tree toppled, pinning a woman beneath its branches before a group of Samaritans pulled her out, according to police and witnesses.

Why the tree fell near 62nd St., blocking West Dr., which runs through Central Park, is under investigation, said Sam Biederman, a spokesperson for the New York City department of parks and recreation.

Immediately after the incident, different accounts emerged about the extent of the injuries to the four people. On Twitter, Eric Phillips, the chief spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that one person was in critical condition, the others “possibly serious.” But according to the parks department, all of the injuries were not life-threatening. The injured were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, police said.

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Antonio Russo of Brooklyn said he was riding his bike down West Dr. when he saw the tree begin to fall, almost in slow motion. When it struck the woman, it appeared as if she became unconscious, he said. When she recovered, still pinned under the tree, she began screaming for her child, he said. The baby, about 7 or 8 months old, was in the arms of a police officer, he said.

“She came to, and started crying and going crazy, and was yelling for the baby,” Russo said.

A group of passersby quickly came to her aide, Russo said, and he “heard limbs being snapped over her.” They were breaking the tree limbs off her, he said. “New Yorkers are great, man.”

The woman who was injured had three children with her, a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old in a stroller, and an infant strapped to her, Officer Meghan O’Leary said at a news conference. O’Leary said when she had arrived at the scene, passersby had pulled the baby off the woman and the other children out of the stroller.

Four officers from the police department’s mounted unit responded.

“We just heard a large crack, and then we saw this gigantic tree go over,” said Officer Joseph Tomeo, who was one of the first officers on horseback to arrive at the scene.

The injured woman was obscured underneath the branches and a stroller was twisted among the tree limbs, he said.

“We knew somebody was underneath there by the way everybody was reacting,” he said.

The tree’s trunk blocked the road, its roots exposed. By noon, arborists were slicing the tree into sections and sending parts through a wood chipper.

Geoffrey Croft, president of the New York City Park Advocates, a watchdog group, said the tree fell about 36 metres from where Sasha J. Blair-Goldensohn, a 37-year-old engineer at Google, was hit by a falling tree that partially severed his spine in 2009.

“This is always a concern,” he said. “Trees falling from the sky.”

“This has happened way too frequently,” he added. “We need to inspect the trees much more often.”

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A baby was killed by a falling tree limb at the Central Park Zoo in 2010.

The trees in Central Park are maintained by the Central Park Conservancy, a non-profit organization. The conservancy did not immediately respond to an email and a phone message requesting comment.

In 2007, a branch fell nine metres from one of the city’s largest elm trees, crushing the arm of a woman sitting beneath it in Stuyvesant Square Park in Manhattan. The woman, Alexis Handwerker, sued the city. The city settled with her for $4 million in 2012.