Man, 30, found dead after falling from Upper West Side fire escape

A 30-year-old movie lighting technitian fatally fell from his fifth floor fire escape early Friday — a gruesome predawn death captured on dimly-lit security footage.

The victim’s distraught girlfriend told The Post that he slipped and fell while smoking a cigarette;  video of his last moment shows him plummeting through a driving rain and landing face down in a paved back courtyard.

But police are also interviewing a second man who was with the victim at the time, and who is shown on separate security footage leaving the building a minute after the fall.

“He was smoking a cigarette last night outside on his fire escape and he slipped,” a sobbing woman who identified herself as the victim’s girlfriend told reporters at the scene later Friday.

She declined to say more.

The victim, whose name is being withheld pending family notification, was found face down in a pool of blood at 2:10 a.m., on the courtyard pavement behind the building on West 81st Street near Amsterdam Avenue, police said.

A neighbor who asked not to be named said he learned of the tragedy when police — who’d been summoned by the victim’s friend — rang his bell.

“They said there is a body down there,” the neighbor said, speaking haltingly and with emotion.

“The witness called [and] said, ‘I just saw somebody slip off the fire escape.’ They [the eyewitness] saw him slip off.

“They [police] came and located the body. They called me to identify the body. I knew the guy, he had been living here 3-4 months,” he added.

“He was face down. His head was smashed into the ground, pool of blood.”

The eyewitness — the victim’s friend, who was there at the time — was described by cops as “very forthcoming,” and cops are leaning toward calling the death accidental, the neighbor said.

“At first they thought it was a suicide, then they thought it was suspicious,then they ruled out suspicious,” the neighbor said.

Still, the neighbor said, even an accidental death is “weird.”

The victim “was pretty heavy and strong,” he said.

“His mind wasn’t careless,” he said.

“He would have had to have stood on the edge of the fire escape to fall. With his weight he would torpedo. But he fell like this [flat],” the neighbor said, noting the surveillance video of the fall.

“It’s just weird.”

The victim worked in stage lighting for a movie company and was also involved in the Black Lives Matter protests, distributing food, hand sanitizer and masks to protesters, the neighbor said.

“It’s just weird,” he repeated. “He’s out in the protests, providing people with masks and hand sanitizer. He’s thinking about life. Why would he put his life at risk like this?”

The neighbor added, “I heard the cops saying meth. The guy who called it in was pretty forthcoming and he may have mentioned it.

“It’s hard to slip from up there,” he added, “unless he was doing something stupid like standing on the edge or under the influence.”

The NYPD and city Medical Examiner’s office are investigating.