A 15-year-old boy fell to his death Thursday morning on the 2900 block of Briggs Avenue in Bedford Park.

Leonardo Marmolejos, who recently celebrated his birthday, fell from a fifth-floor fire escape around 6 a.m. down to the alley behind the apartment building where he lived.

The teen's grandmother says Marmolejos' mother went to bed around 10 p.m. Wednesday and awoke to police knocking at her front door. She thought all along that her son had been asleep in his bedroom.

It was the building's superintendent who heard the fall and found Marmolejos. Responders brought him to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His mother was admitted to St. Barnabas for symptoms caused by shock.

A day care on the third floor of the building is run by Sandra Taveras, who's known the Marmolejos family for years now. She says the boy was always friendly and polite, especially when she passed him in the hall a couple days ago.

Marmolejos had just returned from a summer spent in Santo Domingo, where he is originally from.