A 15-year-old girl fell to her death yesterday after she attempted to jump between rooftops in Hell's Kitchen.
Police say that Chelsea resident Natalia Jimenez was on the roof of a building at 10th Avenue near 48th Street around 4:30 p.m. on Friday when the incident happened. Neighbors apparently yelled at Jimenez and two friends she was with at the time to get off the roof. The Times reports that she fell five stories:
The friends had jumped between three buildings and were headed back to where they started when Natalia lost her footing and slipped into an enclosed air shaft between the buildings — 697 and 699 10th Avenue — landing on the pavement. Flimsy black netting had covered the shaft, but on Friday night a gaping tear remained where she had fallen through.
"It was a big thump," Leslie Rodriguez, who lives in the back of the building where Jimenez fell, told the News. "I thought someone had slammed the door. I ran down and saw someone lying there. She was in a crouch. It was horrible."
Jimenez was transported to Mount Sinai St. Luke's Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The other two girls were uninjured.
"They took my baby girl, she was a good girl, she never got into trouble, she was happy, she was funny, she made everybody laugh," the victim's mother, Agatha Mangano, told ABC.
Jimenez lived with her family in an apartment above a Famous Original Ray's Pizza shop at Ninth Avenue near W 22nd Street in Chelsea. The pizza chain was owned and operated by her grandfather, Rosalino Mangano, who told NBC, "My granddaughter is the best girl in New York."
Jimenez's mother is demanding an investigation into the fall, and blamed the death on her daughter's two female friends: "My daughter was afraid of heights; she'd never been on the roof here. She wouldn't even go on the fire escape, so I think foul play is involved and I want justice," Mangano told ABC.
Witnesses said that the two other girls were inconsolable at the scene: "The two girls who were with her, they were crying, they were blaming each other and crying like, 'Oh it's my fault, it's my fault,'" added Jessica Soto.
