Karma is a Bitch, Part VII...

Harlem athlete, 19, plunges to death in egg-tossing prank gone wrong

BY KERRY BURKE, MELISSA GRACE and ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, October 13th 2008, 9:16 PM

A high school athlete fell to his death in west Harlem Monday when he tried to jump from one roof to another during an egg-tossing prank.

David Diaz, 19, and a few friends were hurling eggs off a roof on W. 135th St. when some of their targets below got angry.

Diaz, one arm in a sling from a sports injury, apparently tried to escape by bolting over a brick wall that he thought separated one building from another, friends and police source said.

Instead, Diaz fell six stories to his death in the courtyard below shortly before 1:30 a.m.

"All you heard was 'Boom! Boom!'" said David Ruiz, 48, president of the tenant association at 612 W. 135th St.

"He hit an air conditioner and then the [ground] floor. But he was alive. This kid was so strong he kept trying to sit up," Ruiz said.

Diaz died several hours later at St. Luke's Hospital, relatives said.

A security alarm on a door to the roof was broken and a Daily News reporter could walk onto the roof some 12 hours after the fatal fall. Two egg cartons were visible on the roof.

"He was my baby. He was a good boy. They were just fooling around," said the teen's mother, Rosa Diaz, outside the family's Bronx apartment. "This shouldn't have happened ... This is terrible. I want to find peace."

Diaz, a senior at Westside High School, was a proud member of the Harlem Jaguars community football team, said coach Pablo Rosario, 21. The team was named citywide champs last year, Rosario said, and Diaz was defensive player of the year.

Rosario had the sad task of passing around a team football for friends to sign.

"I am just going to take it to his mother," Rosario said.

"Hopefully, she'll decide to let him take it with him."