A fight over an insult to a girl ended in tragedy yesterday when a promising high-school student collapsed and died during an early-morning brawl outside Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
An 18-year-old was taken into custody.
The victim, Sharif Abdallah, also 18, had been hanging out with a group of teens at Bartel-Pritchard Square on the west side of the park. He was drawn into a free-for-all shortly after midnight when someone in the group shouted that his buddy’s girlfriend looked like “Ugly Betty.”
When the fight was over, Abdallah collapsed, convulsing before his body went limp, witnesses said. He died at Methodist Hospital.
During the fight, three teens had slipped away and came back – one of them with his father, the witnesses said. One of Abdallah’s friends said the man jumped in and helped the three beat his pal and another teen.
“They ambushed two of our friends in the park,” said Jamar Allah, 16. “I saw four people walking away, and Sharif ran up yelling at them and then he collapsed.”
Some 12 hours after the brawl, cops took the suspect – whose name was withheld – out of his Carroll Gardens home in handcuffs. Charges were pending.
The suspect’s father insisted he was not involved. “The story’s wrong,” he said. “They have it all wrong.”
An autopsy will determine if Abdallah died from injuries suffered in the brawl or because of a pre-existing heart condition. Several of Abdallah’s friends said he’d had heart problems, but his father denied that.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Leonard Greene