MANHATTAN

Police yesterday charged a man with murder for allegedly pushing a friend into an open manhole during a fight. Cops initially called Kyle McGarity’s death, at 4 a.m. Saturday, an accident. But yesterday, after interviewing witnesses, they reversed themselves and charged the dead man’s friend and neighbor Keith Masters, 47, with murder. Cops said Masters and McGarity, 25, had been out drinking. They were returning to the building on South Street where they both lived when they began to argue. They got into a fistfight, and McGarity tumbled into the uncovered manhole at the corner of Fulton and Pearl streets. Officials said he was scalded to death by the steam. Masters told police the fall was an accident. Con Edison said the manhole was covered when it was checked at 2:30 a.m. Saturday. The utility did not know how the vent stack was removed.

A Harlem man was stabbed in the back and killed during a fight with another man over his wallet yesterday, cops said. Milton Parker, 40, died across the street from his apartment on East 108th Street at about 8:30 a.m. Police were trying to determine if Parker knew his attacker, who fled, leaving the victim’s wallet on the ground.

A man opened fire into a crowd in front of a West Side nightclub yesterday, shooting a bouncer and four other people. The violence broke out at 4:40 a.m. in front of the Octagon Club at 555 W. 33rd St., police said. The gunman ran off and was not immediately identified. Investigators were trying to find out if the shooting was linked to an incident the previous night, in which a man was thrown out of the club and threatened to return and shoot people there. The bouncer who was shot had been involved in that altercation. He was in front of the club early yesterday but was not working at the time of the shooting. All the victims, including a 20-year-old woman shot in the arm, were taken to local hospitals in stable condition. Other victims were hit in the shoulder, leg and hip.

THE BRONX

A 36-year-old man died yesterday after cops found him shot in the head in his car, authorities said. Ruperto Feliciano, 36, died shortly after 8 a.m. in Lincoln Hospital, where he had been taken hours earlier. Feliciano, who lived on East 99th Street in Manhattan, was found Saturday at 11:20 p.m. in his car parked on Manida Street.

STATEN ISLAND

A firefighter has been arrested for breaking down his girlfriend’s front door, cops said yesterday. Mark Blanchard was busted at his girlfriend’s Hillman Avenue home at 11:59 p.m. Saturday and charged with criminal mischief, police said. The girlfriend was not identified.