His mom begged him not to go, but a Manhattan teen took a joy ride on a friend’s all-terrain vehicle early yesterday anyway – with deadly results.
“Honey, please don’t go out,” Elba Duran, 44, told her 19-year-old son before he went off with his friend Wednesday night.
“Don’t worry,” Andelbi Paulino told his mom. “If I fall, I’ll just get a scratch.”
“But it wasn’t a scratch,” Duran sobbed. “I’m never going to see him again.”
Paulino joined some friends to tool around on two ATVs in the F parking lot of Downing Stadium on Randalls Island early yesterday.
The friends said the tragedy happened when Paulino slammed the brakes of the 2003 Yamaha four-wheel ATV, causing it to fishtail. He was tossed over the handlebars and crashed head-first into a 2-foot-high concrete Jersey barrier, said Paulino’s brother, Anlet Paulino, 17.
“He hit the wall with his head and he was unconscious,” Anlet said.
Someone in the group called cops, who found the teen bleeding profusely. He was taken to New York Hospital, where he died about an hour later.
Duran said she never saw her son ride on an ATV before. She called on cops to crack down on the kids in her neighborhood, who she said often horse around on motorbikes.
“They should be required to wear a helmet,” she lamented. “They should try to control it more because some of these kids are riding around crazy in the streets doing wheelies.”
Paulino, who moved from the Dominican Republic to join his mom in Inwood eight years ago, was still alive when police came to get his mother at their home to bring her to the hospital, brother Anlet said.
When Anlet got the call later that morning that his big brother was dead, he didn’t believe it.
He said his aunt called from the hospital and first talked to his 16-year-old sister, Anleiba Paulino.
“She was crying and my aunt was crying,” Anlet said.
Police say Paulino was not wearing any protective gear at the time of the accident.
Anlet said Paulino’s girlfriend often begged his brother to wear a helmet when riding, but that Paulino would say, “Nah, nah, I don’t like to wear a helmet.”