A 14-year-old boy who died in March this year after falling from a seventh-floor balcony in east London was “trying to look up at the stars,” a coroner said.
Marcel Bruchal, from Newham, was at his grandparents’ newly refurbished maisonette at Sleaford House, Bow, at 9.15pm on 19 March when he fell through the ground and landed on the tarmac of Blackthorn Street.
Someone in his family said he looked over a balcony “in a weird way” twice before his death. The family member told the Daily Mail that an ambulance arrived at the scene at 9:35pm and found Marcel seriously injured and suffering from a heart attack. At 10:06 p.m., paramedics placed a tube down his throat to help him breathe and gave him CPR as they took him to the Royal London Hospital. But at 10:09 p.m., doctors stopped trying to save Marcel’s life and said he was dead.
The Sun says Marcel was a popular and respected student at Oasis Academy Silvertown in North Woolwich who loved astronomy. Iwoulia Wozniak, his grandmother, said something very sad about the last time they were together before he died. She told me: “That night there were many stars and a comet passed. Maybe he borrowed it to check… We’re sure Marcel didn’t do it on purpose.”
When Marcel’s grandparents were preparing their apartment, it was the first time he had been able to stay with them in a year. He was “very excited”. On March 18, after Marcel came home from school, he and a family member watched TV all night. They had German sausages with mustard for breakfast on Saturday and then played table tennis for two hours at the University of East London. Iwona told the Daily Mail that it was “amazing” and that they “dance around”. She continued, “Marcel went to the bathroom for a while while we were salsa dancing. Someone from his family went with him because he didn’t think he would come back. He saw Marcel standing on the balcony and looking down. He talked about how Marcel looked at it in a weird way.”
Iwona then took her shopping at Tesco. She noted that Marcel was “bandaged at my hip” and “thought it was weird at the time.” But Marcel’s mother, Karolina, told her it was normal and that he was “clingy”. When they got home, Marcel was watching “Jumanji” and after they ate, he suggested doing karaoke. Iwona recalled that when she opened the door to the balcony, Marcel and a family member went outside. When she heard the family member scream, her whole world turned upside down. She said to me, “I heard him screaming, ‘Marcel, Marcel, Marcel, Marcel, Marcel, why?’ He was screaming and crying next to me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. He took me by the hand onto the balcony. I looked over the balcony but I wasn’t sure what he was trying to show me. “Marcel is lying there,” I was told.” “Then I saw Marcel’s shirt and we ran out of the building to see him lying there. He wasn’t lying on the sidewalk; Instead, he was far from the building. My husband moved him around a bit, but I was screaming and shaking so much I couldn’t hear him. I told my husband not to touch him because I was going to put the patchwork on him, but then the ambulance came.”
Iwona said she doesn’t know if anyone saw Marcel fall or why he “might have jumped”. Marcel was reportedly bullied at school, and she recalled a time a few months ago when “a boy snapped at him and asked, ‘Are you gay?'”. Still, she said, “I don’t think it was bullying.”
Metro says when detectives looked at his text messages as part of their investigation into his death, they found “nothing odd.” Coroner Mary Hassell said at the end of this week’s hearing, “Some parts of Marcel’s death are clear to me, others are harder to understand.” “devastating” damage the fall had inflicted on his body, died from 1A multiple injuries.
After Marcel’s death, his mother, Karolina Bruchal, spoke about him: “We never thought that we would find ourselves in this situation in our lives. Even in my worst dreams, I never thought I would write those words. And I’m writing because we’re so sleepy and helpless when we so desperately want to wake up. No more tears will be shed. Marcelek, who we love, is beautiful, smart, smart and sensitive.” His grandparents left a letter at the scene that read: “Dear Marcel, it’s hard to describe how empty our lives have become from one day to the next . You will always be our beloved first grandson and we will always love you. As hard as it is to say, we love you more than life itself. We are saddened and feel like there is nothing in the world without you. The grandparents.”