One person died and two were injured when a building under construction partially collapsed, police said. The fire department said it responded to the call about the five-story unoccupied Manhattan tenement building at about 12:30 p.m. last Tuesday, after some of the building''s floors apparently gave way and crushed a construction worker on the first floor.

No scaffolding was visible outside the building, and the outer walls did not appear to be affected. A view from the roof of a nearby building showed that the top floors of the structure had fallen in.

Richard Joseph, 33, of Brooklyn, was killed. The two who were injured were taken to a hospital, and no other information was immediately available on them.

Relatives of Joseph said he had predicted at a Christmas Eve party that he would die on the job. "He said, you know, ''I''m not going back to this job because I just feel like I''m gonna die if I go back there,''" recalled cousin Octavio Felix, who did not say why Joseph felt he would die.

The Department of Buildings halted work at the partially collapsed building and was investigating.