Two Manhattan high school boys play-wrestling in an empty classroom that should have been locked hurled a stool out a sixth-story window yesterday — clobbering a seven-months-pregnant woman walking below.
Rosaura Beristani, 29, was in serious condition with head injuries last night as cops charged the two 15-year-old Washington Irving High School students with assault.
The Bronx woman was taking a break from her job handing out flyers shortly before 11 a.m. when the heavy metal-and-wood stool came crashing down on her head at E. 17th St. and Irving Place in Gramercy Park.
"I just held her hand for a while," said real estate broker Robert Morrison, who rushed to the bloodied woman's side.
"She wasn’t talking. Her eyes were wide open, but she was obviously in pain," he said. "When I saw the chair I just couldn't believe it."
Beristani, the mother of a 5-year-old daughter, was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery. Doctors said the Mexican immigrant was expected to recover and reported there was no apparent harm to her fetus. "I’m surprised from where the injury was she didn't suffer a more serious injury," said Dr. Alfred Culliford, the hospital's trauma chief.
"It was a six-story fall. I would have expected her to be much more injured than this," he said. "She got lucky. She got very lucky."
Just like on TV
Police sources said the two students told detectives they were reenacting body slams and smackdowns they had learned watching pro wrestling on TV when the chair went out the window.
"One kid was holding the chair and was going to hit the other kid with it, horsing around, playing wrestlers, when it went flying out the window," said one police official. "They both appear to be good kids who did something stupid."
The teens, one from Queens and the other from Manhattan, were charged with second-degree assault, police said. One student is cooperating with cops, but the other quickly got a lawyer, sources said.
The two were grappling in an empty social studies classroom that was supposed to be locked, said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. The teacher responsible for locking the room is facing disciplinary charges, he said.
"This is unacceptable, and we will take appropriate action based on the facts," Klein said.
Identified flying objects
A teacher at the school, who asked to remain anonymous, said things flying from windows there is an all-too-common occurrence - a complaint echoed by people who live or work in the neighborhood.
Last year, a student threw a plastic bottle from the window and struck an infant in a stroller, they said.
Six months ago, a chair smashed the windshield of a car parked below. Robinson Lilienthal, 54, a Rutgers University professor who lives across the street, said people in the neighborhood avoid walking along E. 17th St. because of the risk of being hit by hurtling objects.
"They are always throwing things from the window," Lilienthal said. "One time it was exams. There were hundreds of chemistry exams floating down 17th St."
