January 16, 2004 -- Boozing and a sexual encounter preceded New Jersey cheerleader Lauren Crossan's death plunge from a ninth-floor hotel room balcony in Kaanapali, Hawaii, this week. That "painful" revelation was made yesterday by the father of Erik Larson, the 20-year-old from Folsom, Calif., who invited 18-year-old Crossan of Randolph, N.J., to his room after meeting her in a Jacuzzi at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort last Monday night.

It was from that room ? shared by Larson and his hometown buddy Donald DeVorss, 19 ? that police say a tipsy and unclothed Crossan stepped out onto the balcony sometime after 1:30 a.m. and plummeted to her death.

"I feel horrible for her parents," said Brad Larson, whose daughter, Brianne, 23, is a former cheerleader who now trains cheerleaders. "We want them to know we feel their pain."

Larson said his son, a personal trainer, met Crossan at a hotel Jacuzzi on Sunday night, had a few drinks with her, and then took her to his room for a "sexual liaison."

"It was just kids enjoying each other's company on a moonlit night in Hawaii," he said.

The two were drinking and intimate, but didn't have intercourse, stressed Lahaina Police Lt. Tivoli Faaumu, who noted that a preliminary autopsy by the Maui medical examiner found no evidence of sexual contact

Soon after the romantic interlude, Larson said, his son, Crossan and DeVorss all passed out in the twin-bedded room. The two men were awakened later in the morning when detectives, investigating Crossan's death, knocked on their door. It was only then that they realized their teenage guest had vanished, Larson said.

The distraught father said he learned what happened from police. He said his son was too upset to discuss what had happened when he phoned home.

"He was an emotional wreck. He said he didn't know anything about how this young lady fell from the balcony," said Larson.

He said DeVorss, who works for his father's landscaping business, was in Hawaii attending a weeklong landscaping-industry convention and had invited him to tag along.

Faaumu said Crossan's death ? which has been officially classified as a "miscellaneous accident" ? "is still a mystery."