FIRE ESCAPE PLUNGE
Bx. fight leads to fall, and a ‘murder’
Dramatic video captured the moment a woman fell from a Bronx fire escape while tussling with a man through a window — part of a wild incident that led the man to allegedly kill another person.
Cops had initially said Erica Morel, 35, just fell from a third-floor fire escape at the Marion Avenue building in Fordham Manor at around 3:15 p.m. Sunday.
But police and law-enforcement sources told The Post on Monday that Morel plunged amid a suspected dispute over money and drugs — and the man she fought with later killed a local resident who harassed him over her near-fatal fall.
One police source said Morel was feuding with another woman over the dough and drugs when she went to the apartment of that woman’s boyfriend, Dwayne Murray, 29, to confront her there.
When the woman wouldn’t let her in, “that’s when Morel climbs the fire escape with a knife,’’ the source said.
“She’s banging on the window, causing it to break. Dwayne came to the window, she backed away, lost her footing and fell.”
A 15-second video taken by a bystander, posted to Facebook and confirmed by police as being from the incident shows Morel scrapping with Murray through the window before felling She hit the fire escape one story below before belly-flopping to the ground.
She was listed in critical but stable condition at St. Barnabas Hospital on Monday, authorities said.
Meanwhile, Murray was treated at the scene for injuries from the broken window — but that wasn’t the worst of it for him that day, the police source said.
People started “threatening him and accusing him of pushing Erica out the window,’’ the source said.
One of the people allegedly hassling Murray was Curtis Nicholas, 37, a member of the Gorilla Stone Gang, a subset of the Bloods, according to the source.
Nicholas turned up seven hours later — fatally stabbed five times.
When his body was found near the Marion Avenue building, officers — the same ones who had investigated Morel’s fall — responded and found surveillance footage leading up to his death, the police source said.
The video showed Nicholas, 37 — a parolee with 22 arrests on his record for everything from robbery to assault — arguing with Murray in front of 2705 Marion Ave. several hours earlier, the source said.
In the footage, “Murray enters the building and returns with the knife, chases the victim and assaults him,” the source said.
“The cops who had been there earlier for the woman out the window had come back, and when they saw the video, they knew it was Dwayne Murray’’ in the footage, the source said.
Murray was charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon in Nicholas’ death, police said.
Cops have not yet decided whether to charge him with anything in Morel’s fall, sources said.