NEW YORK (AP) β About three dozen friends, colleagues and former classmates of Kyle Jean-Baptiste have gathered in Central Park to mourn the accidental death of a rising Broadway actor who had already made history at just 21.
Clutching flowers at Bethesda Fountain, the tearful group honored Jean-Baptiste, the first African-American and youngest person to ever play the role of Jean Valjean in “Les MisΓ©rables” on Broadway. They hugged and told stories of the young man, concluding the Monday memorial by singing the rousing “The People’s Song” from that musical.
Jean-Baptiste was sitting on a fourth-floor fire escape of an apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn with a 23-year-old woman Friday night when he stood up, slipped and then fell backward to the ground.
