Police searching for 3 suspects following New York City home invasion and fatal fall
NEW YORK -- A home invasion in Washington Heights that ended with a fatal fall is under police investigation.
The NYPD said 73-year-old Jacinto Remigio fell from his sixth-floor apartment window on 161st Street on Saturday just before 5 a.m., landing on second-floor scaffolding. The circumstances around his fall are currently unknown.
Police are searching for three suspects, adding it's unclear if they knew the people in the home and why they targeted the specific apartment.
Here's what police say led up to the fall
Surveillance video shows one of the suspects walking on the scaffolding and, at one point, covering the surveillance camera. He then entered the building and used the elevator to get to the sixth floor, where he waited for the other two suspects to climb up the fire escape before letting them in, detectives said.
Investigators said once inside the apartment, the three suspects tied up a 40-year-old man and stole an $8,000 gold chain, along with $200 cash. The man wasn't hurt, but once officers arrived to the apartment, they found his father, Remigio, on the scaffolding.
Police said he had fallen from the window about 30 minutes after the robbery. He was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital.
Building resident said he heard "a loud bang"
Richard Ramsundarsingh, who lives two floors down, said he was abruptly woken just before 5 a.m.
"There was a loud bang early in the morning," resident Richard Ramsundarsingh said. "I heard the sound. You think it's the neighborhood."
Ramsundarsingh said the reality of what happened was starting to sink in.
"Two flights down. What if they had stopped on this floor? Or the floor before or somebody else? God knows what could've happened. It's kind of scary now," Ramsundarsingh said. "When you think about it, it's only two floors up, and you have no idea that someone just lost their life two floors up. It goes to show one minute you're here and the next minute you're gone."
Anyone with any information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). You can also submit a tip via their website or via DM on Twitter, @NYPDTips. All calls are kept confidential.