BUSHWICK — Funds flooded in to help the mourning mother of the 13-year-old boy who plummeted to his death from the roof of a Grove Street building lay her son to rest.
A GoFundMe campaign launched Monday by relatives of Rame Pierluisse — who was described as a jokester of a teen who loved computer games, handball and writing — had surpassed its $7,000 goal within the day.
"He was an angel," said the boy's grieving mother Selenia Feliciano, 50, a lifelong Brooklyn resident who grew up in Greenpoint and raised her son in Bushwick. "Since he died, it rained every day on and off... He's crying up in heaven.
"I want my baby back," she said, choking back sobs. "He was a little kid, my baby. I can't live without him."
Rame was an eighth-grader I.S. 347 School of the Humanities, where English was his favorite subject.
He would play pranks on his mother, sometimes rubbing Vaseline on the toilet bowl so she'd slip off, or on the doorknob so she'd fumble when trying to get in and out, Feliciano recalled.
And though his voice was only just starting to change, the teen was already political, his mother said. He'd grown to detest President Donald Trump.
"Every morning he'd watch the news [and say], 'Mom look what this idiot did today. He's taking government funds from poor people," she recalled. "'He's lying Mom, where's his income tax.'"
Rame had aspirations of growing up and joining the Army in order to "save people's lives," Feliciano said, a plan she worried about because she feared for his safety.
On Friday, the afternoon of Rame's death, the boy had come home from school, picked up some money for pizza and French fries, and headed out to walk his girlfriend home, Feliciano said.
He was supposed to be back by 5:30 p.m., but Feliciano soon got an urgent phone call from the hospital to get there as soon as possible.
On the way there, she already knew he was dead.
"He left my heart," she said.
Police later told Feliciano's family members that Rame and three other boys had been hanging out on the roof of 57 Grove St., a few blocks from the boy's Wilson Avenue apartment, when two of them fell off the roof.
Rame fell first and a 15-year-old fell on top of him, doctors told later told Feliciano at Kings County Hospital.
"His fall saved the other kid's life," she said. "Otherwise they would both be dead."
The second teen was also rushed to the hospital with serious injuries to his pelvis, though he was conscious and alert when emergency workers arrived, police said.
It's unclear how the boys fell, and police were still investigating the death on Monday.
Rame's wake is slated for Tuesday afternoon San Juan Memorial Chapel at 317 Central Ave. from 4:30 to 8 p.m. The funeral and burial will be held Wednesday morning starting at 9 a.m. at the same location.
