NYC [NY Daily News]- An actor who played an inmate on TV’s “Oz” was behind real prison bars after allegedly knocking a man down an elevator shaft to his death at a trendy Chelsea nightclub yesterday, police said.
Granville Adams, 43, [pictured] was charged with criminally negligent homicide.
The victim, Orlando Valle, of the Bronx, was celebrating his 35th birthday at BED, a posh nightspot that was featured on “Sex and the City,” when he got into a scuffle with Adams and was thrown against the elevator with such force that the doors opened and he plunged four stories to his death, cops said.
Adams, of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, a manager-maitre d’ at the W. 27th St. club, portrayed Muslim inmate leader Zahir Arif on “Oz,” the HBO prison drama that ran from 1997 to 2003.
Witnesses told cops that the 4 a.m. fracas at the hot spot – where bottles of Absolut cost $275 and celebs make appearances – began with an argument between a woman checking coats and Valle’s niece.
As cops tried to sort through the accounts early yesterday, Valle’s family demanded someone be held accountable.
Luz Valle wailed outside St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, where she saw her brother’s body. “He’s not dead!” He’s still warm!”
Relatives tried to console her, but she sobbed uncontrollably.
“He didn’t just die!” she screamed. “Somebody killed him.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” said Valle’s wife, Sherebar Stewart, 36, her voice cracking with grief. “I just can’t believe this.”
Valle, a paroled drug dealer who was working in the mailroom of the New York Public Library on Fifth Ave. at 42nd St., had joined about 10 friends and relatives for his birthday at the club.
Pals said it was his first time at the venue, which holds more than 600 people and has 20 beds on its main floor. His friends and family members toasted him several times and began heading out as the crowd thinned.
Valle’s niece Tiffany Turner, 20, was trying to get her coat when a manager later identified as Adams made a gesture toward her, a police source said.
The coat-check woman, who apparently is dating Adams, noticed and started screaming at Turner.
“That’s my man!” the jealous worker hollered. “That’s my man!”
As the fight escalated, Adams and another man who works at BED walked toward Turner, witnesses told the Daily News. One of them pushed her to the floor, and Valle stepped in.
“What the f— is your problem?” Valle barked. “Why did you do that?”
Luz Ruiz, a friend who attended the party at the club, watched in horror as Valle, the father of a 13-year-old son, lost his grip after he slammed into the elevator. “He tried to hold on with his left hand,” said Ruiz. “He just fell. It happened so fast.”
Valle fell from the sixth floor and landed on top of the elevator car between the first and second floors, cops said.
“He was my son,” said the dead man’s father, Felipe Valle, 51. “We were very close. It was his birthday.”
The deadly skirmish is the latest dose of trouble to hit club land, which has seen shootings and several bars closed for drugs and underage drinking.
BED was closed last night.