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Brooklyn family struggles with death of father at Shea

BY CARL MACGOWAN | carl.macgowan@newsday.com

8:26 PM EDT, April 16, 2008

Emily Narainasami, 14, holds a photo of her deceased father, Antonio Narainasami, outside her home in Brooklyn. (Photo by Jori Klein / April 16, 2008)

A Brooklyn family yesterday struggled to come to grips with a night out at the ballpark that turned tragic in the blink of an eye.

The pregnant wife of Antonio Narainasami, 36, sobbed as she told reporters about the "loving father" and sports fan who fell off a Shea Stadium escalator and plunged to his death Tuesday night as he left a New York Mets game. The fall was witnessed by other members of his family, including his two daughters.

"It's all a shock to me, my family," Ambeeka Narainasami said outside the family's apartment building. "He's a great father. ... He had so much to look forward to."

Witnesses told police that Antonio Narainasami, a heating and air conditioning unit repairman, was sitting on the escalator handrail when he fell over the side and plunged to his death. His family told reporters Narainasami slipped and fell.

Narainasami fell from the mezzanine level on the stadium's leftfield side at about 10 p.m. as the Mets were completing a 6-0 victory over the Washington Nationals, police said. He was pronounced dead at 10:25 p.m. at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens.

Emily Narainasami, 14, held her father's picture as she stood next to her mother. Still in shock, she said she and other relatives saw her father fall over the escalator railing.

"Either he went to turn around to tell me something or to make sure we were behind him, and he just slipped," she said. "We screamed for help, me and my uncle."

Family members said Narainasami's other daughter, Angelie, 8, also witnessed her father's fatal fall.

A witness told Newsday that Narainasami fell from one escalator and landed on another. "When I turned around, we heard a thump," said Andrew Robins, 18, of Elmhurst, who was working at a souvenir stand with another employee when a body fell from above. "We saw something rolling down the escalator."

Escalators at Shea take fans up to the ballpark's four seating levels before games, but are shut off after games. Many fans take ramps to leave.

Fans at Yankee Stadium are allowed to walk down ramps or escalators following games, a team spokesman said.

The city Parks Department, which owns Shea, declined to comment yesterday, and the Mets refused to discuss the specifics of the accident.

"The Mets, the city Parks Department, and the New York Police Department are investigating the incident," the Mets said in a statement. "Our deepest and heartfelt condolences go out to the fan's family."

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission opened an investigation yesterday to see if the escalator malfunctioned, a spokeswoman said.

A 21-year-old Yonkers man fell to his death from a Shea escalator in May 1985, and a 37-year-old man died at Yankee Stadium in April 1999 after falling from a moving escalator.

Witnesses told police that Narainasami was on the escalator railing -- either sitting or sliding -- just before he fell.

Ambeeka Narainasami said she had a hard time believing her husband would do that. "I don't know," she said. "I don't think he would be sliding down on anything."

She said her husband was a "loving father" who loved to fish and captained his local cricket team.

"He loved the Mets," said Narainasami's sister Jenny Narainasami, 38. "He has a son coming on the way, and he can't even see his son."

Pervaiz Shallwani and staff writers Keith Herbert, David Lennon, Carl MacGowan, Rocco Parascandola and John Valenti contributed to this story, which was written by MacGowan.