FATAL DIPLO GAME
LES apt. fall after night of boozing
An Australian diplomat plunged five stories to his death from his Manhattan balcony Wednesday when a drunken game of “trust” went horribly wrong, police sources said.
Julian Simpson, 30, fell from his seventh-floor terrace to a second-floor landing at his Clinton Street building on the Lower East Side at around 1:35 a.m., the sources said. He was dead at the scene.
Simpson, his wife and another couple had gone out for dinner and drinks Tuesday night and returned to his building to enjoy skyline views from his roof.
The Empire State Building was lit in rainbow colors following Australia’s vote in favor of same-sex marriage.
While on the roof, the diplomat, who served as the second secretary to the UN for Australia, climbed to a higher perch and twirled his friend’s wife dangerously close to the edge, sources said.
When they returned to his apartment, the woman’s husband confronted Simpson over the stunt, and Simpson swore he meant no harm, according to sources.
To prove his loyalty, Simpson suggested playing the “trust game.”
“I will prove it that you can trust me,” Simpson said.
He sat on the balcony railing and leaned back — expecting the friend to grab him — but he slipped as the man reached for him and fell backward to his death.
Investigators say foul play is not suspected, sources said, adding that everyone in the group had been drinking and reeked of booze.
A resident at the building near East Houston Street said he heard the late-night commotion — and when he looked out his window, he saw a bloodied body surrounded by paramed- ics on a private balcony.
Another resident, Jared Bauer, 30, who lives on the sixth floor, called the incident “shocking.”
“It’s not really a building where a lot of parties or anything crazy goes on,” Bauer said. “It’s a relatively quiet building with young professionals.”
A doorman at the rental building, where one-bedrooms go for $3,000-a-month, said Simpson had been living there for a year.
Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign-affairs minister, extended her “condolences to the family and loved ones of Julian Simpson, a young Australian diplomat who has died in tragic circumstances in New York. Julian was a diligent, professional and highly skilled diplomat.”