A 53-year-old man fell out of a tree and died while trying to rescue a cat in the Bronx late last night or early this morning, the police said.
The man, whose name was not released, apparently threw a rope over a branch on Allerton Avenue and Bronx Park East, the street that runs along Bronx Park, the police said.
“When he got a few branches up, the branch that he was on gave way,†a police spokeswoman said. Officers on patrol found the man's body around 3 a.m., the spokeswoman said. The cat was still in the tree.
The man, a scrap-metal and can collector well known in the neighborhood, was pronounced dead at the scene, the spokeswoman said.
The fate of the cat was not immediately known.
