Man Jumps from Empire State Building, 2013 Survives After He Lands One Floor Below, Hospitalized with Emotional Distress
A man tried to jump from New York City's Empire State Building Wednesday night and was rescued before he could end his life.
The man, a 33-year-old tourist named Nathaniel Simone, reportedly climbed over a security fence on the Empire State Building's observation deck shortly before midnight and jumped from the 86th floor. However, he landed one floor below, a police source told the New York Post.
"He climbed over the fence and dropped down," the police source told the paper.
A couple at the scene said they saw the man swing his legs into the air at the 85th floor as if he meant to jump again, reports the New York Daily News.
"He was in his own world, like he was lost," one of the witnesses Luis Ariel Jofre, told the paper. "He was calm looking down, like it was nothing, but it was 80 stories high."
Simone was taken to Bellevue Hospital to be treated for emotional distress, a broken ankle and cuts to his hands, according to the New York Daily News. Images released by local press showed paramedics carrying out Simone in a stretcher into an ambulance.