NEW YORK — A nine-year-old boy is fighting for his life after being thrown off the roof of a five-story building in the Bronx.
The incident took place on Friday evening in the Morris Heights district, a low-income residential neighborhood in the west Bronx .
Casmine Aska, 17, was charged Saturday morning with throwing the boy from the roof of the building at 1545 Nelson Avenue in the Bronx Friday evening, police said.
According to CBS New York , sources have told police the younger boy was forcibly dragged up to the roof by Aska.
After police arrived at the scene around 8:30 pm on Friday, they found the boy unconscious and unresponsive and suffering from severe trauma to his body.
The 9-year-old was subsequently taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Medical Center , and is reportedly in a critical condition.
“He was lying on the floor without a T-shirt on. He wasn’t moving, but he was crying for his mommy,” the New York Post quotes neighbor Wanda Simonetti, 59, saying. “He was crying, ‘Mommy! Mommy!’”
Police have said Aska later made “incriminating statements” and is said to have had a fight with the younger boy. It has not yet known what the argument was about.
The nine-year-old boy lives with his parents and grandparents in a five-story building. Aska lives in the same building on another floor.
Another neighbor, Philip Rivera, claims it’s unbelievable that Aska could harm the boy.
“For him to do anything wrong to that kid, no, no,” he said . “Maybe something went wrong and it was by accident.”
Aska has been charged with second-degree attempted murder.
