Nathaly Ramirez, the new Bronx mom who was pushed off a 15-story balcony by her ex-boyfriend as their infant baby was cradled in her arms, died “saving her daughter until the very end,” her heartbroken mother said Saturday, just steps from where her daughter perished.
“God sent an angel to shield (my daughter), and today Novaly — my little girl — remains in critical but stable condition,” Ramirez’s mother Nathaly said at a vigil in Spanish outside her daughter’s building on Olinville Ave. in Allerton.
“Please keep praying for (her),” Nathaly said about her granddaughter.
Ramirez’s estranged boyfriend, Angel Carrasco, 31, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly pushing Ramirez, 23, and their 8-month-old daughter off the balcony of her 15th-floor apartment a day earlier.
Detectives charged Carrasco with murder and attempted murder, officials said. He was hospitalized after his arrest. His arraignment was pending Saturday.
Ramirez died at the hospital but managed to cushion her daughter’s fall with her own body so the infant survived the 3:35 a.m. Tuesday 150-foot plunge from her balcony, family members said.
Ramirez’s mother and grandmother joined relatives and advocates of domestic violence survivors to remember Nathaly — who family members nicknamed Michelle — and encourage abuse victims to seek help at all costs.
“You cannot change them,” Ramirez’s grandmother, Nathaly Minaya, told the crowd regarding domestic violence abusers. “When you see that first sign, please, please walk away because they need help.”
“And mothers, please, teach your boys that women need to be respected,” she added.
Her grandmother said Ramirez “was the happiest person ever and she always had a smile on her face. (She gave the) best hugs ever.”
“Even in the midst of her tragedy, she was still thinking about her daughter, you understand?” she told the crowd. “And that is incredible.”
“Our priority today is to tell women that they are not alone — that they should seek help,” Ramirez’s mother said. “Do not open the door again to anyone who abuses you physically or mentally.”
Nathaly said her daughter “would embrace you with a tenderness that brought only peace.”
Besides being a doting mom, Ramirez was a star volleyball player as a teenager and a leader both on and off the court, her former coach told the Daily News last week.
“She was a great player. Just very disciplined in her sport. She was a leader and just an amazing human being,” said Rosaly Santana, 45, her former volleyball coach and mentor who maintained a friendship with Ramirez as she grew into a young adult.
“She was a beautiful person inside and out, and I would like for her to be remembered more for her beautiful smile and her personality than anything.”
Santana met Ramirez when the then-15-year-old joined the coach’s extramural volleyball league, Matters of Sport Athletic League. The two remained close even after Ramirez aged out of the program.
Santana would frequently check up on Ramirez, texting her to make sure she was OK. They last spoke in June.
“We were talking about the baby,” Ramirez recalled.
“She loved her baby so, so, so, so much. Before she had her daughter, she was already in love with her baby. She was just crazy over her baby. She loved her daughter.”
Santana said Ramirez’s relationship with her accused killer was “not stable.”
“I didn’t want to ask too many questions because I know that her situation was a little uncomfortable,” she said. “I didn’t get into details with what was happening. I just offered to help her in any way I could.”
“I’m in shock, disbelief,” Santana said of the young woman’s death. “I feel like nobody deserves to go through certain things and I feel like she definitely did not deserve this. Just a person with so much life in her. It still hasn’t sunk in that she’s gone.”
Ramirez went to Bronx Leadership Academy before studying psychology at Baruch College, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She interned at Lishawn’s Consulting, a Brooklyn-based business management consulting company, and offered Santana her services if she ever needed a logo design or marketing help.
“When it came to her sport and her discipline, she was very serious about it,” Santana said. “She loved volleyball. She loved to play. She was very good at it, and she was a leader when it came to playing that game.”
“She would make anyone smile and laugh, and she always wanted to see everyone laughing,” she added. “If she ever saw someone mad, she would stand in front of them and just make them smile. She was a joy. The best way I can explain her is the sunshine walking into a room. Sunshine.”
Carrasco, who grinned wickedly at hecklers as detectives escorted him out of the 49th Precinct stationhouse in the Bronx, had been arrested twice earlier this year for clashes with the victim in her apartment, according to police sources.
On Jan. 5, Ramirez told police Carrasco hit her and he was arrested for misdemeanor assault. Just three days later, he was arrested again for a case involving her, but the case was later sealed.