kanarikovs
Father threw son off high-rise roof, then jumped himself.
The Brooklyn dad who threw his 3-year-old son off a Midtown high rise and then leapt to his death was on his first unsupervised visit with the boy amid a a vicious divorce battle with his wife, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

Dmitriy Kanarikov, 35, and his wife Svetlana Karanikov, 32, had split up in August after four years of marriage, and were locked in a rancorous battle over custody of their son, Kirill, Kelly said. Dmitriy had been getting supervised visits with the boy but on Sunday he was allowed to take the boy from the for a brief solo visit for a few hours, Kelly said.

"They separated in August of this year, where the woman moved to New Jersey and obtained an order of protection against the husband. Now, the husband was granted supervised visiting rights, where the father was only able to see the child in some sort of institutional setting. Yesterday was the first day in which that was not the case," Kelly told reporters Monday.

The father, who worked for the financial firm TIAA-CREF, picked up the boy at 10 a.m. and took him into 124 W. 60th St. just before noon on Sunday, Kelly said.

He tossed the child off the roof and then stepped off the ledge, police said. The boy's body was found on the roof of a John Jay College building at 455 West 59th St. and Kanarikov hit the top of 425 West 59th Street. The boy, who was wearing his Christmas pajamas, was taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt across the street, but he could not be saved.

Karanikov had threatened to take the boy if his wife didn't agree with his demands over their Mill Basin house and other property, the police commissioner said Monday.

"There was a history of domestic turmoil...There were threats," Kelly said. "The nature of the threat was that unless she signed over the house and some other property to him, he was going to take the child."

Svetlana Karanikov filed for custody and support in Oct. 2013, records show, and moved to Fair Lawn, NJ, to live with relatives, police said.

The husband, who was living in the couple's recently renovated new South Brooklyn home, picked the child up at the 17th precinct stationhouse Sunday morning because it was the midpoint between Mill Basin and New Jersey, Kelly said.

"Tragically, he went to the building, 124 West 60th St, took the son to the roof and all indications are he threw him off and then he jumped himself," the commissioner said. Police have not found a suicide note.

"The mother obviously is very distraught," Kelly said.

Neighbors in Brooklyn said that the family had only lived there briefly.

"They just moved here a couple of months ago," said Mikhail Chaplik, 77, who lives across the street. "I saw them a couple of times since then. Just going in and out of the house. This is such a big house. I'm surprised there were only three of them living there. They must be rich." He said no one in the neighborhood could make sense of it.

"I don't understand what happened," Chaplik said. "It's a tragedy."