Home-Alone Shock

New York Post/July 11, 2004
By Georgett Roberts and Cynthia R. Fagen

The devastated mom of a 3-year-old toddler who plunged to his death from a top-floor window of a Midtown building owned by the Unification Church was making arrangements to fly home yesterday from South Korea, where she had been attending a religious seminar.

The mom, Agnes Lis, a missionary for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's religious sect received the horrifying news in Seoul that her only son, Jeffrey, died Friday night.

The boy, who had been left alone in the family's one-room apartment on the sixth floor of 4 W. 43rd St., managed to wiggle past the sleeves of a window air-conditioning unit.

Police sources said the boy's dad, Peter, left the child to go to work as a truck driver and arranged to have a 30-year-old woman who lives in an adjoining room "check in" on him, police sources said.

The neighbor was not in the room when the boy plunged to his death, a police source said.

A family friend said that when the woman went to check on the boy around 10:30 p.m. and realized he was missing, she became frantic and ran to another resident who called cops.

Jeffrey was barely breathing when he was discovered 40 feet below, on a second-floor scaffold where workers had been making repairs on the building, cops said.

The boy suffered massive head injuries and died a short time later at St. Vincent's Medical Center.

Police said there was no sign of foul play, and no criminal charges were filed.

Jeffrey's two young sisters had been with staying with their grandparents at the time.

Family friend Arnel Delos Santos, 27, said Agnes, who is from the Philippines, was a missionary for the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and had been out of the country to attend a religious seminar.

"I am very sad. That little guy was like our own family," he said, holding his hand over his heart. "I didn't sleep last night just thinking about it. He was a bright child."

The Lises and their three children had been living in the building for five years. They belong to the controversial church, whose members are nicknamed Moonies.

The Unification Church leases the first three floors to the Church of Scientology, which had been holding a meeting when tragedy struck.