NYPD: Man Who Threw Son, 3, Off UWS Roof Involved In Custody Dispute

                 Svetlana Bukharina, Dmitriy Kanarikov and their son, Kirill

NEW YORK – A Brooklyn man involved in a custody dispute who was supposed to turn his 3-year-old son over to the boy’s mother instead threw the child off the roof of a 52-story Manhattan apartment building before jumping to his death, police said.

Officers responding to an emergency call reporting two jumpers from the building on the Upper West Side around noon Sunday found Dmitriy Kanarikov, 35, and the boy on the lower rooftops of two separate nearby buildings.

“I’m horrified,” said tenant Chris Prengman. “I’m horrified.”

“My sister saw in our apartment the man fell by,” another man added.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. His son, Kirill Kanarikov, was found clinging to life, but was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. A witness said the boy was wearing Christmas pajamas.

Luis Ortiz said he was at the hospital when paramedics rushed the boy there and that they were pumping his chest and working on him.

“You could tell that he was already slipping away,” said Ortiz.

“Measures were taken to try to save the boy immediately,” said hospital spokesman Donald Maxton. “However, he died in the emergency room.”

The boy’s mother had custody of the child and the father, who had visitation rights, was supposed to hand the boy over to the mother at a police precinct Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

Pictures posted online just a few months ago show a beautiful, happy family. The last time Kanarikov posted on Facebook, he wrote: “I want to be the best dad and husband. Nothing is more important to me right now.”

Neighbors at Kanarikov’s Mill Basin home, where he lived alone, are deeply disturbed by what happened.

“We’ve seen the boy once before,” said neighbor Felix Glazer. “It breaks your heart. It’s a very sad situation.”

Police investigating the deaths left the building in the mid-afternoon to photograph a gray Lexus RX350 parked nearby.

It’s the second time this year that a parent and child have been involved in a fatal plunge from a New York apartment building.

In March, a woman clutching her baby son in her arms plunged eight stories out of a Harlem apartment window to her death, but the 10-month-old survived. Authorities found a suicide note in her home.