Fatal fall off fire escape

5-floor tragedy on Upper W. Side

An Upper West Side man enjoying a late-night smoke on his fire escape plunged five floors to his death after returning to his apartment early Friday for a drink with a friend, cops said.

The 30-year-old victim, identified by his girlfriend as Colin Cotter, was pronounced dead at the spot where he landed behind his W. 81st St. building after the 1:38 a.m. plunge. His roommate was sleeping inside when Cotter tumbled from the fire escape, with police surmising that he slipped and fell.

Cotter and his friend were drinking before the tragedy, and cops said the death was not considered suspicious. But girlfriend Jessica Rayo, 32, said she received a text message reading “good night my love” from her boyfriend of three years shortly before the fatal plunge — and suggested something more ominous might have occurred.

“This situation is very fishy and I don’t like it at all,” she told the Daily News. “I want an investigation. I want to find out … A big guy like that is just going to fall?”

The building superintendent said cops told him that the man with Cotter called in the fatal fall and was “forthcoming” about the details of the horrifying death.

Cotter worked in movie production and the distraught Rayo said the couple was set to move into a new apartment together. The two often stepped outside to share a cigarette at his current home.

“Listen, we used to smoke on that fire escape all the time,” she continued. “I basically live with him. How is he going to slip? And if it’s raining, how is he going to be smoking outside? The first thing you do is go inside.”

A neighbor recounted how police rang his bell in the middle of the night, asking him to identify the body.

“He was face down, head smashed into the ground (in a) pool of blood,” the neighbor, who asked for anonymity, told The News. “A witness called in and said, ‘I just saw someone slip off the fire escape.’ I knew the guy, he had been living here three to four months.”

Cotter — an activist who attended dozens of Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks — would often smoke on the fire escape, neighbors told police.

“He’s been up there 1,000 times and he was a strong guy,” said Daniel Baker, 35, a friend of the victim who accompanied Rayo to the building. “That guy was taller than me, and he was stronger. I haven’t met many people in my life that are like Colin. He was one of the few people where if you do a favor for him, he’ll return it.”

Yet lingering questions remained about his death, with one neighbor claiming Cotter couldn’t have fallen unless he was standing on the fire escape railing. A surveillance video also showed Cotter plummeting “at an angle” — leading police to initially suspect Cotter was the victim of foul play, the neighbor said.

“(He) didn’t come down like a torpedo,” the neighbor said. “At first they thought it was a suicide, then they thought it was suspicious. But the detectives ruled out a suicide.”

Over the last several months, Cotter often served as an unofficial medic at BLM protests, the neighbor said.

“He was getting donated free masks and supplies to hand out at the protests,” the neighbor recalled. “He also had his rolling bag case with a red cross taped on it. He was all about the protests and doing his part.”