The mother of a teen who watched helplessly as two youths fell in the Harlem River said her child was still plagued by flashbacks and ugly rumors two weeks after the tragedy.
“He still has visions, he’s still seeing it,” mom Leslie Rispers told The Us.Mistertruth on Saturday. “If he goes to school, if he goes to the store, walks down the street, people are asking him questions. I’m setting him up for therapy.”
The other boys, Garrett Warren, 13, and Alfa Barrie, 11, ultimately drown in the river.
Her 14-year-old son first asked a stranger to call 911 after the boys went into the water, and then ran to a nearby barbecue to ask a woman to do the same in his desperate effort to summon aid, she said.
“My son did the right thing,” said Rispers. “He ran away and got help … He feels sad because he wishes he could have done more. But I’m telling him that he did the right thing.”
Rispers spoke with the News after Garrett’s mom challenged the account of what happened in the May 12 incident described by the NYPD as horseplay gone lethally wrong.
Dayshell Moore, in an earlier interview with the News, said she heard there was a fight before the boys went into the river — prompting the mom to start her own investigation.
Attorney Ezra Glaser, representing the family of second victim Alfa Barrie, intends to file a notice of claim on their behalf for legal action against the city in his death.
“I don’t know what ‘horseplay’ was involved, but these two kids are dead due to the disrepair of the park,” he told the News.
Rispers said her son became the target of unfounded rumors about his role in the aftermath of the tragedy, even as he struggled with what happened — and twice spoke with police about the deaths.
“Basically, they’re irrational in their grief,” she said of those laying the blame on her boy. “They all grew up together and he feels they are turning on him.”
Warren, 13, and pal Barrie, 11, disappeared into the water, with the older victim’s body recovered May 18 and the younger boy’s found two days later.
“At the end of the day, this is a child who witnessed two deaths,” said Rispers of her son.
According to police, video showed Warren and Barrie riding a CitiBike before they ran into a third youth and they climbed over a fence. Moore said they then crawled through a hole in a second fence.
NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig confirmed an unidentified man told police that he was approached by a group of youths saying “two kids were pushing each other and fell into the water.”
Rispers said her eighth-grade son watched in horror as the other boys went into the river.
“He was waiting for them to come back up,” she said. “Go into the water and pop back up. He tried to do his best. What was he supposed to do? Jump in the water himself? Then we would have had three dead.”