Many friends and neighbors yesterday left flowers, notes and other remembrances at a makeshift shrine in the parking lot of the Mo'ili'ili apartment building where 3-year-old Edward Reiser fell to his death. Photos by Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

Edward Reiser, known to those who loved him as Eddy, fell Saturday from his parent's eighth floor apartment in Mo'ili'ili.

The boy was 3 years old, the medical examiner said.

Police said Edward was at home with his father just before the fall.

The father, whose name is also Edward Reiser, told detectives he had stepped outside the door of his apartment at Hono Hale Towers for a moment while Eddy was inside.

Lt. Bill Kato, of the Honolulu Police Department's homicide unit, said the boy's father told police he stepped out into the hallway momentarily during a "time out" while he waited for the boy to calm down.

When he stepped back in, the boy was gone. He had fallen to the parking lot below.

Kato said investigators are treating the case "like any other death from a fall case" and are waiting for the results of an autopsy, scheduled for tomorrow, before ruling out foul play, although none is suspected at this time.

"We need to have a lot of questions answered and think the autopsy will have a lot to tell us," Kato said.

Friends and relatives passed in and out of the apartment building yesterday, paying their respects to the family.

The shrine in the parking lot at the back of the building included a styrofoam plate of scrambled eggs, Portuguese sausage, rice and hash browns. A cup of water stood beside it.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family," read a note addressed to Eddy and taped to a pillar above the breakfast. "... we've all suffered a great loss. Your bright smile to us in the elevator or the pool area will be thoroughly missed."

It was signed: "One of your Eighth Floor Neighbors."

Bonnie Matsumoto, a nurse who lives on the second floor of Reiser's building, said she was standing outside the building's entrance Saturday night when she heard the thud of something falling in the back.

Shortly afterward, she said, Eddy's father came running down the stairs, looking frantic and shouting that his son had fallen.

The nurse and the father performed CPR on the boy until Emergency Medical Services paramedics arrived.

Eddy was taken by ambulance to The Queen's Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The boy's mother returned home, distraught, shortly after he was taken away.

The Reisers' neighbors described the family as close-knit, and commented in particular about the father's close relationship with his son.

It was not quite four months ago that Exodus Berger, 2, died after climbing onto a metal storage rack and falling from a 14th-floor balcony at his mother's apartment on University Avenue.

His Aug. 8 death was the first caused by a fall from a high-rise involving a child age 4 or younger since March 1999, according to the state Department of Health's Injury Prevention Program.