Posted on 03/31/2010 5:13:56 AM PDT by ETL
Savulich/News
Body of unidentified man lies on sidewalk on W. 34th St.
after the man, believed to be in his 20s, reportedly jumped
from the Empire State Building
A young man took a fatal plunge from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building on Tuesday night, crashing down on W. 34th St. and horrifying pedestrians, police said.
The jumper managed to get past the 10-foot-high spiked fence ringing the observation deck and then disappeared below the outermost ledge around 6:15 p.m., police sources said.
He landed with a sickening thud on a sidewalk along W.34th St., near a bank branch at the northeast entrance of the famed midtown skyscraper.
"He came down in front of the Bank of America. Boom! It was an explosion," said Luis Mosquea, 28, who was manning the front entrance of a women's boutique on W. 34th St., across from where the man landed.
"His body was shattered and his sneakers were scattered on the sidewalk," said Mosquea, recalling in horror how stunned pedestrians scampered in every direction to flee the nightmarish sight.
"One guy ran over and covered the body with an umbrella," he said. "It's crazy."
Police said last night they believed the man was a college student in his early 20s, but they cautioned that the man had yet to be positively identified.
The observation deck of the 102-story landmark, normally thronged with tourists, was relatively uncrowded yesterday on account of heavy rain. Police sources said they did not believe the man was part of a group of tourists.
At least 34 people have jumped to their deaths from the Empire State Building since it opened in 1931.
The most recent was Moshe Kanovsky, 31, of Brooklyn, who leaped out of a 69th-floor window in April 2007.
One of the more memorable recent suicides from atop the observation deck came in October 2000, when a 19-year-old Canadian man dressed like a pirate chose to end his life in headline-making fashion.
I guess they’ve ruled out foul play.
Reminds me of a guy who committed suicide by jumping off city hall in Buffalo, New York a few years ago. The guy was probably one of life’s losers, so he decides to end it all. So the unlucky bastard leaps, and ends up impaling himself on the flagpole in front of city hall.
Here’s a link to an amazing high resolution panoramic view from the same 86th floor observation deck in which this 21 -year old leaped:
(Size: 1.5 MB, Dimensions: 7,979px × 740px)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Skyline-New-York-City.jpg
What goes down sometimes stays there.
Bushes Fault...
What goes down sometimes stays there.
Now that that’s public knowledge I bet you’ll see a bunch more copycats.
I am sooo naughty, ROTFL. That is funny.
Not that flattened and splattered people is, I find that sad, but that stained glass window is precious.
Exactly. I'm sure many of us, at one time or another, considered it, if even not very seriously. But then we toughed it out and made it through only to experience much happier times again. New York was in the midst of a miserable rain storm for the past two days. I'm sure that didn't help the guy's spirits.
Ya made the big time kid, now who is paying for the cleanup?
His favorite movie was King Kong —
If you elect John Kerry, HE will walk again!! I can fly, I can fly, I can f................!
Yes! Was Dick Cheney seen hanging around there yesterday?
Must have bounced off. Notice how flat the body is, Rachael Corrie style?
Remember the urban legend about killing someone by throwing a penny off the Empire State Building? This is just a more extreme example of the principle.
Must be the weather.
Some dude offed himself at the Bullet hole shooting range in Belleville NJ last night about the same time roughly 10 miles away.
That’s not gunna be good for business.
They'll be open by noon today. Someone did the same at Brick Armory in Lakewood NJ a few weeks ago and they were open the next day. It's not the fault of the business and it wasn't someone shooting someone else.
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