By SABRINA FORD, JAMIE SCHRAM and YOAV GONEN
June 10, 2008
A 50-foot tree towering over a Manhattan schoolyard full of kids came crashing down with little warning yesterday - striking more than a dozen shrieking first-graders scattering away from its path.
The tree buckled a sidewalk and fell into the yard of Manhattan's Epiphany School at about noon.
A parent volunteer, identified by her husband as Monica Tompos, went to Bellevue Hospital with head and neck injuries, authorities said.
Emergency responders treated 13 children, mostly first-graders, in the school's office for minor scrapes, bumps and bruises.
"I just heard all the little kids screaming and I put my hands up to block my head, but I got hit with the branches," said Danniella Tompos, 13, an eighth-grader.
There were approximately 50 kids and several adults outside during recess,
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, Joseph Zwilling, said things could have been much worse if adults monitoring the yard hadn't acted quickly to get the kids out of harm's way.
"They said they heard some kind of a cracking sound, so they were able to get the children underneath an overhang - which protected them from more substantial harm," he said.
The mammoth tree, which landscape workers estimated to be about 800 pounds, crashed through a retaining wall and fence that was separating it from a private lot on 21st Street near Second Avenue and the neighboring schoolyard.
"It sounded like it was cracking, and then I saw a lot of pollen coming up so I just ran," said Francesca Velardi, 7, a first-grader who escaped unharmed.
A neighbor told The Post that the tree had appeared unstable for a while, but a spokesman for the Parks Department said the office hadn't logged any calls or complaints about it.
Police and fire officials could not say what caused the tree to fall.
Additional reporting by Annie Wilner
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