The defunct light tower where a 16-year-old Brooklyn boy fell to his death is a neighborhood dare that’s always enticed youngsters to scale its sides — something the teen’s heartbroken sister hopes they will think twice about in the future.
“Stop climbing that (tower). You’re not cool,” Timothee Englund’s older sister warned other teens in Williamsburg on Saturday as her family made funeral arrangements for her beloved sibling. “I know it’s fun. It looks cool. It feels cool. But stop. You’re not Superman. You’re not invincible. You can’t survive. You need to know your own limits.
“There’s more to life than adrenaline rushes,” she said somberly.
The tower, located in Bushwick Inlet Park on N. 10th St. and Kent Ave., is surrounded by a high gate, but the fence ends at the rocky shoreline abutting the East River. The gate also has several holes and breaches that have been hastily repaired. Local teens easily skirt these defenses.
“Our hearts go out to the young man’s family and friends following yesterday’s tragedy,” a city Parks Department spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the tower holds a Coast Guard beacon that predates the park. In the past, the fence sometimes has been vandalized by people cutting holes in it to gain access, the spokesperson said, adding, “On those rare occasions, our maintenance teams have made prompt repairs to the fence.”
Timothee circumvented the fence and had climbed the tower around 1:15 p.m. Friday when he lost his balance and fell 15 feet to the ground. EMS rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, but he could not be saved.
It was not immediately clear if anyone was with Timothee when he fell.
“I think he had a lot going on and I think that he just wanted to climb up that tower, and that didn’t go his way,” said his sister, who wished not to be named. “I don’t know why he thought that was a good idea.”
On Saturday, a Daily News reporter saw a handful of people get past the gate, usually from the shoreline.
One young man found looking up at the tower from inside the fenced-in perimeter said he, too, had scaled the tower once when he was Timothee’s age.
“I climbed it,” David, now 24, told The News. “People are like, ‘I dare you to climb up.’ It’s usually a dare, or some kid would be like, ‘Watch me climb up.’”
“It’s really close by to the school. That’s why a lot of kids come over here,” said David, who didn’t know a teen had died falling from the tower just a day earlier.
“It’s just crazy,” he said. “(This) could have happened to me. I don’t know how to feel.”
Timothee, a 10th grader at Manhattan Village Academy in the Flatiron District, had everything going for him. He was an athlete, had a black belt in mixed martial arts and was a child model. He even had a girlfriend and plenty of friends to keep him busy.
“He was sassy and very stubborn but in a good way, though,” his sister said. “He was so funny. Probably the sweetest teenage boy I’ve met. He had a very sensitive side to him.”
“He’s probably one of the best people I know in my whole life,” she said tearing up.
Timothee’s unexpected death has devastated the teen’s close-knit family, where he was the youngest of four children.
“My parents, I’ve never seen them in this state before,” his sister said. “I just know that their hearts are shattered and their worlds are shattered.”
“Obviously, my world will never be the same.”
Timothee’s father, Tobias Englund, still couldn’t fathom how this happened to his youngest child.
“He was born here in the winter,” the stunned father said. “He lived all his life here. It’s the only place he ever lived. He is part of this community. Everybody loves him.”
The grief-stricken parent agreed that climbing large structures is “super dangerous.”
Witnesses told police Timothee was taking photos with his phone as he climbed the tower, but his family didn’t think he was snapping pictures or posting them on social media.
“We don’t know that. We have no idea,” his father said.
Timothee’s sister agreed.
“I think he went viral like once, but he was not an influencer,” she said, refuting assumptions that he was some kind of social media urban explorer. “I’m not sure where that came from.”
Last month, a 16-year-old boy fell 50 feet down a shaft inside the Queensboro Bridge while performing a dangerous stunt he planned to post on TikTok. The friends that were with him ran off without calling 911 after he disappeared down the shaft, the teen’s mother claimed.
First responders rescued the teen, who was suffering from hypothermia, from the narrow shaft of a main tower supporting the bridge where it rises over Roosevelt Island.
