It has been a 12 months since Kathleen Kelley bought the devastating name.
Her 17-year-old son, Nico, the youngest of her three youngsters, had fallen six tales from the roof of their Manhattan residence constructing and died.
Since then, she has pleaded with the police and Manhattan prosecutors for solutions. She has requested her son’s pals and classmates at Fordham Preparatory College within the Bronx for any particulars about what occurred on that wet afternoon. And when an official investigation revealed scant data, she employed a personal investigator.
To today, Ms. Kelley, 58, has just one main clue concerning the closing moments of her son, Nico Nuño-Kelley, who was supposed to start out his first 12 months on the College of Notre Dame final autumn. Minutes earlier than he climbed to the roof of their Gramercy Park residence within the driving rain on Could 20, 2023, he inhaled marijuana from a buddy’s vape pen and commenced appearing erratically, based on statements the police and one of many two pals with him that afternoon gave to the personal investigator.
The medical expert’s workplace dominated Nico’s demise an accident, however the uncertainty about what led to his fall has tormented his household. The buddy who was mentioned to have given him the vape pen has refused to speak to the police, to Ms. Kelley or to the investigator, and the police didn’t get better the pen.
A toxicology report, which relied on blood samples taken from Nico after his demise, revealed excessive ranges of THC — the chemical accountable for most of marijuana’s psychological results — in his system. However the drug, based on specialists who’ve studied the consequences of marijuana on the mind, hardly ever results in the sort of reckless impulse that apparently led Nico to go as much as the roof.
Ms. Kelley, a commodities adviser who owns her personal firm, mentioned she fears she and her ex-husband, Hilario Nuño, Nico’s father, won’t ever know the total reality about their son’s demise.
Who offered the marijuana that Nico vaped? Was it tainted with one thing undetected by the toxicology report? How may there be no legal penalties? And if the drug was not accountable for Nico’s uncommon conduct, what else may clarify it? Did he fall or bounce?
Mr. Nuño, 59, mentioned he and Ms. Kelley hope their son’s demise sparks extra conversations across the efficiency of marijuana, its accessibility and its probably dangerous results on youngsters.
“That’s the downside with this leniency, this lack of know-how of what’s happening with our youth,” he mentioned. “Now we have to start out being extra cautious as a result of we’ve been given this freedom.”
The circumstances round Nico’s demise, whereas extraordinarily uncommon, based on specialists, aren’t distinctive. In Colorado, a 19-year-old man who consumed a cookie with excessive ranges of THC died after leaping from a fourth-floor balcony, based on a 2015 report from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. In 2021, a 19-year-old Penn State scholar plunged 11 tales down a trash chute headfirst after she consumed alcohol and marijuana at a lodge. The police declined to cost the person who gave her the medication.
A horrifying discovery
The day he died, Nico was at house with two pals — a lady he had recognized since childhood and her boyfriend, a fellow scholar from Fordham Prep.
Nico, who often smoked marijuana, took a number of puffs from the vape pen that the boyfriend gave him, based on a report compiled by the personal investigator, which was primarily based on interviews with the lady and Nico’s pals and textual content messages they despatched each other that day. Exterior, it was raining arduous, however contained in the residence, Nico appeared relaxed.
Then immediately he started appearing unusually.
“No, I don’t like this,” he wailed. He paced the halls and grabbed the partitions. He fell to the ground within the fetal place and whimpered, saying he felt “autistic,” based on the report.
He ran towards his room, and the 2 pals who have been with him stayed within the kitchen.
Moments later, based on the report, the lady and her boyfriend heard loud ringing all through the constructing. The roof alarm had gone off, and Nico’s room was empty. About 10 minutes later, a neighbor from the constructing subsequent door rushed over to the foyer of Nico’s residence constructing with horrifying information: A boy was mendacity unconscious on the roof of his constructing.
Nico was pronounced useless at Bellevue Hospital. The medical expert’s workplace mentioned the reason for demise was a number of blunt impression accidents. The toxicology report didn’t discover traces of any medication apart from marijuana in his system.
The police mentioned that after consulting with the Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace no fees can be filed.
“Our thorough investigation of this tragedy with the N.Y.P.D. revealed no proof of criminality,” mentioned Doug Cohen, a spokesman for the Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace.
The dad and mom of the lady and her boyfriend declined to remark, and The New York Instances shouldn’t be figuring out the youngsters as a result of they have been underage on the time and haven’t been charged with any crimes.
A excessive dose of THC may cause extreme panic and stress, mentioned Dr. Michael Moss, the medical director of the Utah Poison Management Middle on the College of Utah.
“Now we have tons of people that come to the emergency room or name us on the poison heart once they have had an excessive amount of hashish,” he mentioned. “They really feel like they’re going to die once they’re really fairly high-quality. Most often we have now to settle them down and possibly give them a little bit of a sedative.”
However a response that may trigger somebody to flee their residence and climb stairs to a roof is “very uncommon,” Dr. Moss mentioned.
It’s arduous to know precisely how a lot THC was in Nico’s system on the time he fell as a result of, not like alcohol, THC ranges within the blood rise and fall far more shortly, he mentioned.
Folks with excessive ranges of THC of their system could really feel excessive paranoia, however that may usually trigger them to remain nonetheless, not run into an open space in dangerous climate, mentioned Dr. Benjamin Caplan, chief medical officer on the CED Clinic in Needham, Mass., which helps folks searching for hashish therapy.
“You wouldn’t really feel regular sufficient in your toes to climb up stairs and climb outdoors or go close to an edge since you’d be additional terrified,” he mentioned.
Dr. Caplan, who was not concerned in Nico’s case, mentioned it’s doable that Nico had a “cannabis-associated psychotic episode,” a uncommon prevalence through which an individual experiences hallucinations and delusions.
Younger folks with psychological well being circumstances are extra weak to such episodes, however Nico had no historical past of psychological sickness, his mom mentioned.
A name from the police
Amongst Nico’s pals, phrase of his demise unfold instantly. Nellie Fitzpatrick, 18, remembered getting a textual content that afternoon from their buddy, Bobby Graves. The three had been pals since elementary college.
Now, Mr. Graves, 18, was on the residence of the lady who had been with Nico, and he urged Ms. Fitzpatrick to come back over.
The lady, sobbing, tried to elucidate what occurred, however Ms. Fitzpatrick may barely perceive her.
Ms. Kelley, Nico’s mom, was in Connecticut, driving to a buddy’s home for dinner, when a police detective known as her to say Nico had died in an accident.
“I assumed it was some sort of rip-off,” she mentioned. She demanded to talk to his supervisor and was dialing that quantity when her buddy known as. Ms. Kelley’s older son, Alejandro Nuño-Kelley, had been making an attempt to succeed in her. He had additionally heard from detectives, who known as him in Peru, the place he had simply landed that day for a trip.
The place are you? Ms. Kelley’s buddy requested.
At that second, Ms. Kelley knew Nico was useless.
She bought out of the automotive, walked by way of the pouring rain into the woods and lay within the mud.
A detective later requested if Nico may have intentionally killed himself. His household shortly rejected that risk.
“Of all of us, Nico was essentially the most open ebook,” his sister, Tara Nuño-Kelley, 24, mentioned. “We might have recognized if Nico was struggling in any means.”
Nico was not impulsive and steered away from different medication, his pals mentioned.
“He was so cautious,” Isabel Maida, 19, mentioned. In New York, it’s straightforward for youngsters with cash to get medication and alcohol, she mentioned, however Nico had little curiosity in experimenting past marijuana.
“He was a implausible scholar and positively took his lecturers so significantly,” she mentioned. “We each had aspirations to go to nice faculties and do one thing nice with our lives.”
Nico cherished to learn and will lose himself in a ebook for hours. He appreciated to play board video games or go to Central Park with pals to sit down within the grass and discuss.
He would inform his pals to “cease being screenagers” if he caught them staring down at their telephones for too lengthy, Ms. Fitzpatrick recalled.
Nico was disenchanted when he didn’t get into Princeton College, however he was removed from depressed, his family and friends mentioned.
He was enthusiastic about Notre Dame and had began contacting different potential college students in New York to prepare a dinner, Mr. Graves mentioned.
Ms. Kelley has retained a lawyer, Marc Stadtmauer, to attempt to construct a authorized case in opposition to whoever offered the vape pen that Nico used.
“What I’m making an attempt to do is put the blame the place it belongs — on the adults who made cash off this tragic incident,” Mr. Stadtmauer mentioned. However to try this, he mentioned he wants extra data or cooperation from the boyfriend who was on the residence when Nico died.
The case was most probably difficult for prosecutors as a result of marijuana is authorized within the state, mentioned Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Legislation College and a former Manhattan prosecutor. The authorized age to possess marijuana in New York is 21.
Although the youngsters have been underage, the usual to cost for negligent murder is excessive, Ms. Roiphe mentioned. Prosecutors would want to point out that the one who gave Nico the marijuana had behaved in some egregious means, like giving him a drug realizing it would kill him.
Even when a prosecutor may show these parts, “is it proper to convey fees in opposition to such a younger child who himself didn’t do something that different youngsters aren’t doing on a regular basis?” Ms. Roiphe mentioned.
However prosecutors may have leaned more durable on the boyfriend to seek out out who offered the drug, Ms. Roiphe mentioned.
The district legal professional’s workplace declined to touch upon the specifics of the case.
A lock of hair, a humorous hat
Nico’s members of the family have tried to consolation themselves with small mementos. His mom wears a locket round her neck that holds a lock of Nico’s hair.
Alejandro, 26, had purchased his brother a unusual blue and white hat created from alpaca fur on the airport simply after he landed in Peru.
“My brother didn’t conform to a gown code,” Alejandro mentioned. Nico usually wore odd and mismatched clothes, normally over his household’s objections. “If I made enjoyable of him hoping he would change, he would preserve it on even longer,” he mentioned.
After Nico’s demise, he gave the hat to his father, who wore all of it winter.
“I put on all of Nico’s stuff,” Mr. Nuño mentioned. “I put on his sweaters. It’s not my fashion, however it was his.”
Tara, Nico’s sister, mentioned she thinks spiritually concerning the tragedy.
“I do assume generally we have been meant to have the life we had with Nico,” she mentioned. “I feel much less concerning the second of demise and extra about what a present he was whereas he was right here.”
His mom thinks usually about one in all her final days with Nico. Two weeks earlier than he died, she was presupposed to go to lunch with pals in Bedford, N.Y. He begged to come back alongside, and he or she hesitated.
Generally mothers prefer to be with their pals, too, she recalled telling him. However she gave in. After lunch, they spent the day strolling by way of the city, with Nico pausing at actual property places of work and fantasizing about shopping for a home when he was older, Ms. Kelley mentioned.
Each time they visited a brand new city, she mentioned, he scoured the actual property listings, then introduced confidently: “That is the place I’m going to dwell once I develop up.”
