A 16-year-old boy who suffered severe injuries after falling 50 feet down a shaft inside the Queensborough Bridge was accompanied by at least three other teens at the time of the accident, who recorded him as he screamed for help before taking the boy’s phone and leaving him to die, according to the victim’s mother and video recorded by the teens accused of abandoning him.
Firefighters rescued 16-year-old Frankie Allocca from the narrow shaft of a main tower supporting the bridge where it rises over Roosevelt Island around 9 p.m. Monday.
Allocca suffered brain and spinal injuries in the fall, and became hypothermic as he waited more than four hours for rescue, his mother said.
“He must have been terrified, alone, bleeding, lying there crying, thinking, ‘I’m going to die,’” said Vanessa Tineo. “That is the part that is so devastating to me. To see how he is and the pain he’s been going through.”
He was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell in critical condition.
“He is going to make a full recovery, but the trauma of this will haunt him, remembering the people who were supposed to be my friends left me for dead as I yelled for help,” the victim’s mother said.
Ed Koch Bridge
Jefferson Siegel / New York Daily News The Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. (Jefferson Siegel / New York Daily News)
The teens who joined Allocca on the Queensborough Bridge are members of a closed Instagram group dedicated to urban exploration, an underground community of thrill seekers who revel in gaining access to abandoned, secure or otherwise off-limits locations, according to another longtime urban explorer with contacts in the community.
“I got notified by a group chat of urban explorers that some kid fell down the Queensborough Bridge and immediately someone sent a video inside the shaft of the bridge,” said the 21-year-old explorer, who gave his name as Michael. “It was the victim, Frankie, yelling in agony.”
Michael said that shortly after Allocca fell, the teens with him posted videos of their near-fatal escapade to a closed Instagram group in which they could be seen fleeing the bridge with the victim’s phone. Those videos were quickly leaked to the internet by other members of the group, Michael said.
“This is horrible. It’s disgusting. It is wrong,” said Michael, who created a petition on change.org demanding criminal charges for the teens that left Allocca behind. “This should be an example of what not to do.”
One of the videos posted online depicts the narrow shaft that Allocca fell down. In the footage, the victim can be heard whimpering in pain as another teen mutters, ‘F–king hell.”
Another clip shows one of the teen’s fleeing with Allocca’s phone.
“Bro, Frankie’s dead. Frankie is f–king dead. I had it all on GoPro. He’s f–king dead. I heard him fall from the bridge. I have his phone. His bag is still in the f–king bridge,” the teen can heard saying in the video.
Police arrested two teens, a 15-year-old charged Wednesday for criminal trespass and a 14-year-old busted Thursday for reckless endangerment and criminal trespass.
“After he was begging for help and saying, ‘It hurts, it hurts. Help me,’ they proceeded to go down, take his phone, leave him there. Climbed out and didn’t call the police or any of his parents. They tossed his cell phone into either the river or sewers and then left him to die,” Allocca’s mother said.
“I will get justice for my baby. They lied. We were receiving calls from his friends giving me condolences as my son was lying dying. They will not get away with this. I will make sure of it. Justice for Frankie.”
Firefighters initially suspected the teen was inside a tower on the Queens side of the bridge after finding an open hatch there, FDNY Lt. Christopher Gaulrapp said. After determining the teen wasn’t there, firefighters searched the bridge tower by tower until they came across another open hatch — this time splattered with blood and with a shoe beside it.
After assessing the victim, firefighters strapped the teen to a Spec-Pak harness system and pulled him to safety.
More than 75 FDNY and EMS members, as well as members of FDNY’s Rescue 1 participated in the save, FDNY Deputy Chief Nicholas Corrado said.
The bridge connecting Long Island City, Queens, and the Upper East Side was officially renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge in 2011.
