A 16-year-old boy died Friday after falling from a tower on the Williamsburg waterfront, police said, in an incident near North 10th Street and Kent Avenue that law enforcement sources said began as he tried to take a photo.
Family members later identified the teenager as Timothee Englund, a sophomore at Manhattan Village Academy. The fall drew emergency crews to a busy stretch of Brooklyn waterfront where Bushwick Inlet Park meets adjacent Marsha P. Johnson State Park, an area known for open lawns, river access and broad skyline views. By Friday night, police still had not said exactly how Englund fell, whether anyone else was with him or what route he took to reach the structure.
Police said officers were called to the area around 1:15 p.m. and found the teenager unconscious and unresponsive on the ground near the tower. EMS took him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Reports from local outlets described the structure as a small tower near the water with a ladder attached to it. Family members publicly identified Englund later in the day, after the police response had shifted from an emergency rescue to a death investigation. In the first hours after the fall, the official account remained brief and procedural: a 911 call, officers at the scene, a transport to the hospital and a confirmation that the teenager did not survive. By evening, relatives had begun filling in the human details that the police account could not.
The early public record offered only a partial explanation of what happened. Police said the call for help reported that the boy had fallen from a ladder on the tower. Law enforcement sources told local media he had climbed up to take a picture, and one account said the image was meant for social media. NBC New York reported the tower was a few stories tall. But police did not immediately say whether Englund had been alone, who made the 911 call or how long he had been on the structure before he fell. The department also said there had been no arrests as of Friday evening. The city medical examiner was expected to determine the official cause and manner of death. Until that ruling is released, the central questions in the case remain unanswered, including whether the fall happened during a climb, a descent or some other moment near the top of the structure.
Family members said Englund was 16 and a sophomore at Manhattan Village Academy, a public high school in Manhattan. In the hours after his death, they described a teenager with a full routine and plans for more. His parents said he loved soccer, basketball and going to the gym, and had hoped to start wrestling in the fall. Those details stood apart from the sparse language of the police report. Officers described an unresponsive boy found on the waterfront. His parents described a son whose time was filled with sports, jokes and ordinary teenage plans. By Friday night, authorities still had not released a fuller explanation of how his afternoon ended at the tower. For relatives, the lack of answers meant the basic facts were settled while the reason for the fall was still unresolved.
The setting helps explain why the incident drew attention so quickly. Bushwick Inlet Park occupies the stretch of waterfront between North 9th and North 10th Streets at Kent Avenue, while neighboring Marsha P. Johnson State Park sits on a former shipping dock and rail yard along the East River. The parks are part of a North Brooklyn waterfront remade over the last two decades from industrial land into public open space, sports fields, walkways and overlooks. The state park still preserves cobblestones and rail tracks from the old site, while the city park serves as a gathering place for games, walks and neighborhood events. Together, the adjoining parks create one of the most recognizable public viewpoints in the area, with long sightlines toward Manhattan. On a clear afternoon, the waterfront is typically busy with joggers, families, teenagers and people taking pictures, which made Friday’s emergency especially jarring for those nearby.
The official agencies involved had said little publicly by the end of the day. The NYPD had not released a full narrative of the fall, and there was no immediate detailed public explanation from park officials about the structure itself. Authorities had not said whether the tower was active equipment, an older waterfront fixture or something in between. They also had not said whether the structure was posted, fenced or otherwise restricted, or whether any inspection would follow the death. Without that information, it remained difficult to tell whether the incident was a sudden slip, a longer climb gone wrong or another kind of accident. What was clear was the speed of the timeline. Within a short span Friday afternoon, the case moved from a call for help to a hospital transport and then to a fatality investigation, leaving detectives to reconstruct the final moments afterward.
As relatives spoke publicly, a clearer picture of Englund himself began to emerge. His mother, Yvette Englund, called him “amazing” and “loving.” His father said he was “goofy” and “funny,” and remembered the jokes they shared. Another remark from the family captured the shock of the day in the plainest possible terms: “We just lost our son,” his father said. The family also said they still did not know exactly how or why he fell. That gap between what is known and what is not has defined the case so far. Investigators have established the time, the place and the fact of the fall. But the public record still does not explain who else may have been there, what happened on the tower in the moments before the fall or whether anyone saw it happen from start to finish.
As of Saturday morning, officials had not announced findings from the medical examiner or said when they might release a fuller account of the fall. Family members had publicly named Englund, and the next major milestone in the case was expected to be the release of the official cause and manner of death.
Author note: Last updated March 21, 2026.