SOCCER KID IN FREAK DEATH
Goal post hits boy, 9, as he hangs on
A Sunday-morning soccer game turned deadly for a 9-yearold Manhattan boy when he mischievously jumped up and grabbed on to a goal post and it came crashing down on his head, police said.
Tommaso Cerase was playing indoor youth soccer on the fifth floor of Park West HS in Hell’s Kitchen at around 10 a.m. when tragedy struck.
The boisterous child was just playing around, hanging on to the crossbar of the goal, when the structure tipped and fatally hit him, authorities said.
“He fell on the ground. Blood came gushing out of his ear. His face turned blue,” said Dino Dionne, who was dropping off his own kids for another extracurricular activity at the time.
Chris Barret, who lives across the street from the school, said he awoke to the wails of the boy’s distraught father, AIG executive Alessandro Cerase.
“I saw them taking the kid out on a stretcher,” said Barret, 44. “They were pumping his chest. It was the father that was yelling. He was screaming.”
Dionne said he and his two kids were waiting for the elevator when they realized something was wrong. He said a man he believes is an assistant coach with Tommaso’s soccer league frantically barreled past them, asking them to make room for paramedics.
“He asked if we can give them space so that he and the paramedics can go up,” said Dionne, 42, who lives on Long Island.
“He was visibly disturbed, he was breathless. I freaked out.”
Barrett said he watched the boy’s hysterical father get into a police car as emergency responders cared for his unresponsive son.
Tommaso, who lived with his family on the Upper West Side, was rushed to Mount Sinai West, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
A woman who identified herself as “a close friend of he family,” emerged from the Cerases’ Riverside Drive apartment building Sunday and released a written statement from the parents.
“Today our dearest son Tommaso passed away in an unfortu- nate incident at his soccer practice. He was full of life and joy,” it read, before adding that the parents were in the “process of grieving.”
Tommaso and his family moved to New York City from Dubai in 2016, according to a building employee who declined to give his name.
A building resident, Samantha Moshen, said, “Hearing [about] a little child dying is the worst possible thing. It’s horrendous.
“I feel sick to my stomach. No one should have to go through this.”