Man Jumps Off Empire State Building, Lands On Observation Deck
Look up there! It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! It’s… Bunk! Although a man may have tried to leap from the Empire State Building April 24, he was certainly no Superman… more like suicidal man. Visitors were horrified as they witnessed a man jump from the top of the skyscraper just before midnight and land on the observation deck below. Undeterred, he got up and prepared to jump again.
“He was in his own world, like he was lost, Luis Ariel Jafre of Argentina told the New York Daily News. “He was calm looking down, like it was nothing, but it was 80 stories high.”
Jafre and Julieta Paola Barambones, also of Argentina, watched the man from the observation deck as he swung his legs in the air as he prepared to jump again, undoubtedly to his death. This time, however, security guards spotted him and talked him into re-entering the building.
“We’re relieved that he didn’t die,” Jofre said.
The man was treated at Bellevue Hospital for a broken ankle suffered in the initial fall. He has been charged with trespassing. Ain’t that a bitch?
More than 30 people have jumped from the 102-story Empire State Building to their deaths since its 1931 construction. And the April 24 jump wasn’t the first to be unsuccessful. In 1979 Elvita Adams also jumped from the 86th floor, only to land on the 85th floor, resulting in nothing more than a broken hip. Most attempts, unfortunately, are more successful. In fact, a laid-off construction worker was the first to commit suicide from the building, jumping to his death before its 1931 completion. And after five people jumped form the building within a three-week span in 1947, the fence around the observatory was added.
