No witnesses in moment soccer goal post collapsed, killing 9-year-old boy
The loud thud caught their attention.
A day after Tommaso Cerase was killed in a freak accident while hanging from a soccer goal, it appears that none of those inside the Hell’s Kitchen gym at the time actually saw what happened.
Police, however, believe Tommaso, a student at the private Dwight School on Central Park West, was killed while he was just being a kid.
As his coach was passing along pointers to other players, Tommaso, playing goalie, jumped up and grabbed the metal goal’s horizontal bar and started swinging.
Boy, 9, dies after soccer goal post collapses on him in Manhattan
The momentum upended the goal, which landed on his face as he backwards, striking his head on the wooden gym floor inside Park West High School Sunday morning.
The coach, Santiago Montoya Salgado, 29, ran over and started CPR as the boy bled from his head and left ear. Others called 911 and ran to get the boy’s mom, Barbara Riccardi, 44, who was downstairs on her phone, sources said.
She came rushing to the gym to assist the coach.
An EMS ambulance crew raced Tommas to Mt. Sinai West Hospital, where he died a short time later, at 10:45 a.m.
Sources said there were six adults in the gym at the time — three parents and three members of the Juventus Academy, which runs the soccer program.
Neither they nor the 10 or so kids there for soccer practice saw the tragedy unfold.
A source said the organization that obtained the permit to use the space supplied the equipment.
“Today our dearest son Tommaso passed away in an unfortunate accident at his soccer practice,” the family said in a statement read by a friend outside the family’s Riverside Drive home on Sunday.
Mayor de Blasio, in a Facebook post, called Tommaso’s death “heartbreaking.”
“Our prayers are with his family,” de Blasio wrote.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña also issued a statement, saying, “This tragic incident is heartbreaking and our thoughts are with this student’s family and school community during this devastating time.”