Death By Jumper (People Killed By Falling Suicides)

[Mireli]

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time :/

Young man killed by breaking suicide leaper's fall

NISHINOMIYA, Hyogo -- A man died Sunday as another man who had leaped to his death from the top of a high-rise building landed on top of him, police said.

The 20-year-old part-timer died instantly when the 30-year-old man who jumped from a twelfth story landing fell on top of him.

The man who jumped also died instantly, but a friend who had been talking to the part-timer when the tragedy occurred was not harmed at all.

Police said the 30-year-old unemployed man leaped from the local government-run housing estate building, landing on the victim and killing them both shortly before 4:30 a.m. Sunday.

Police are looking into why the 30-year-old man had decided to commit suicide. (Mainichi and wire reports, Aug. 8, 2004)

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040808p2a00m0dm011001c.html

[Emp edit: It was so good I had to quote the artcile for posterity.]

 

[Yithian]

I'd only ever heard such stories in fairly juvenile urban legends until last week, when a verifiable case actually appeared on the news. No English-language article, I'm afraid, but I'll relate what I have:

A man in Changwon (a city of a million people and the provincial capital of Gyeongsangnamdo) was repeatedly hassled by his wife (who is presumably now hideously traumatised) to take out the family rubbish for recycling in the evening after dinner. After a fair amount of nagging, he relents and steps outside of his large apartment block, heading for the recycling-area that serves the building.

Almost immediately he is hit—and instantly killed—by a (female) fellow-resident of the block who has just jumped from the roof in order to kill herself (reason unknown, but Korea has the highest female suicide rate in the world).

The pure misfortune of this makes me shudder?

Any similar cases?

 

[OneWingedBird]

Surprisingly I've never heard of it happening but since it seems entirely possible it can... I'm pretty sure it must have at some point.

 

[WhistlingJack]

Danny Suhr, a NYFD firefighter, was hit and killed by someone who jumped from the WTC during the September 11th attacks: -

Todd Maisel: There were bodies hitting the ground, but we didn't realize it until Danny Suhr of Engine 216 got killed by one. The body exploded when it hit him. It was absolutely shocking. Did I shoot it? I shot him being dragged by his fellow firefighters. That I shot. You see something like that, your reflexes kind of get out of whack. I shoot firefighters and cops, that’s what I’ve done for almost my entire career. But when I saw that it was one of the first times I took some pictures and then just started crying.

9.11.01: The Photographers' Stories, Pt. 2—"Don't Shoot This"

 

[liveinabin]

I was expecting to read about someone dying in a clothing related incident.

 

[Pete Younger]

Me too! :?

 

[EnolaGaia]

I recall reading a mainstream news story about just such a 'death by jumper' some years ago. If I'm not mistaken it was in Eastern Europe; I want to say Czechoslovakia.

 

[Spudrick68]

Go on then, say it.

 

[GNC]

I read in a book of crazy news stories about a woman in Hungary ages ago who on hearing her husband wanted to divorce her, jumped from her apartment window in a suicide attempt, landed on him accidentally, killed him, and survived. This would have been in the 1970s, I think. Sounds too good to be true, though.

 

[oldrover]

Isn't this tied in with the Suicide Song?

 

[Spudrick68]

http://youtu.be/_ZEEgIti8sM

 

[Zilch5]

Somewhat O/T - but in Singapore they are having a similar problem - not people jumping but people throwing their garbage out of high rise buildings. They even have a term for it: "Killer Litter".

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ ... 89/1/.html

 

[Cherrybomb]

Whilst living in a rather nasty block of flats in east London many moons ago, there were "kids" who would throw old tvs/radios/heavy items out of the flats balconies to try and hit people . I also remember a nasty case of these same idiots throwing puppies off the 18th floor :cry:

Ok, back OT...

 

[liveinabin]

We have a continuing problem on the A12 near here with kids throwing concrete blocks of the bridges onto cars here.

 

[Cherrybomb]

:shock: That's awful.

I remember a rather "colourful" member of the community used to climb the balconies on the blocks of flats to break in. Seeing a bloke several stories up clinging on for dear life cus he wants to nick someone's telly being a real highlight after a long day working on the wards

Also, seeing people with toddlers and letting them play out on the balconies was always sickening to me

 

[EnolaGaia]

Rynner posted a story from Spain of such a death in the Strange Deaths thread:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/strange-deaths.10395/post-902371

(See his posting of 3 September 2009.)

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's a Chinese incident from 28 December 2008 ...

Suicide jumper kills cyclist
A cyclist died after he was hit by an apparently suicidal man who jumped from the 35th floor of a nearby building in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, state media has reported.

The 52-year-old cyclist, surnamed Li, was making deliveries from his fast food restaurant when the jumper landed on him on Thursday afternoon, the official China Daily reported on Sunday.

The younger man, surnamed Liu, was allegedly a drug addict who had moved to Shenzhen from the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, the newspaper quoted local media as saying.

He jumped from the balcony of an apartment after standing there for 12 hours, it said.

Liu died instantly and Li died later in hospital, the newspaper said in a brief report.

SOURCE: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=636_1230523036

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's another Chinese incident from March 2009. In this case, the deceased 'saw it coming' ...

Chinese man dies after catching girlfriend in suicide attempt

A man has died in China while attempting to catch his girlfriend after she jumped from the seventh-floor of an apartment block in an attempt to commit suicide.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai 1:55PM GMT 26 Mar 2009

The man, who was identified only by his surname, Wang, held out his arms to break his girlfriend's fall.

According to the local newspaper, Wang was killed by the impact of his girlfriend landing on top of him, but succeeded in saving her life.

Although she suffered some broken bones, she was not in a critical condition, according to the Straits Capital News.

The tragedy occurred in the southern city of Quanzhou, in Fujian province. The newspaper quoted witnesses saying that Mr Wang had pleaded from the street with his girlfriend not to jump shortly before the accident.

The couple had reportedly had an argument earlier in the day, during which she had threatened to commit suicide.

The woman was not named, although she was photographed entering the local hospital in a confused state.

China has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, particularly among women. Statistics from the Chinese government show that close to 300,000 people try to kill themselves each year.

A study by Peking University in 2007 found that over 20 per cent of the 140,000 high school students surveyed said they had considered suicide.

SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... tempt.html

 

[Ringo]

I read an article online from April 2012, that says 3 people die each day in Japan by jumping from buildings. It cites 3 cases of people being squashed.



http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/world/2012/04/04/woman-killed-as-suicide-jumper-lands-on-her

 

[amyasleigh]

One of the IMO splendid Matt Scudder mysteries by Lawrence Block, set in New York City, centres round an incident of the kind which this thread involves -- lady's death-plunge off high building, chances also to kill gentleman at ground level. In this novel, though, it turns out that the apparent suicide is in fact a murder...

 

[Sergeant_Pluck]

One of the IMO splendid Matt Scudder mysteries by Lawrence Block, set in New York City, centres round an incident of the kind which this thread involves -- lady's death-plunge off high building, chances also to kill gentleman at ground level. In this novel, though, it turns out that the apparent suicide is in fact a murder...

I read that few months ago, but I don't remember her killing a passerby. I thought it was a straightforward supposed suicide (that Scudder later exposed as murder) but I don't remember a squashed pedestrian also...

 

[amyasleigh]

It was some years ago that I read the novel, and memory may be playing me false; but I seem to recall the jumper-who-in-fact-wasn't, landing on and killing a blameless young man who was, with his girlfriend, on the way to or from Mass (the church service, not the American state).

 

[Sergeant_Pluck]

Yes, you could be right - I've just realised that the story I read was just that - a short story - included in the the collection of Scudder shorts, The Night and the Music. The situation you describe strikes me as having enough complexity to fill a novel, and there were, what, 15-20 Scudder novels?! It must be in one of them.

 

[amyasleigh]

Per Wikipedia, 17 Scudder novels to date. I suspect the "falling person kills person below" incident may be in the one about the berserk serial killer with a grudge against Scudder, who sets out to murder everyone close to Scudder -- with the killer wrongly believing the "pseudo-jumper" to be a past or present girlfriend of Scudder's, and thus pushing her out of the window.

The Scudder novels tend to have rather "gnomic" titles -- nothing in the title to hang much of an association on: I can't remember what title belongs to this one about the serial-killer-on-a-mission.

 

[Boulters_Canary1]

Whilst living in a rather nasty block of flats in east London many moons ago, there were "kids" who would throw old tvs/radios/heavy items out of the flats balconies to try and hit people . I also remember a nasty case of these same idiots throwing puppies off the 18th floor :cry:

Ok, back OT...

I remember that was a pasttime at my secondary school back in the early 70s - Books and glass items from the science labs, mainly. The police were finally called when the hoolies started chucking desks out of fifth-floor windows. :shock:

More on subject: Does anybody remember a story (in, I think, one of the red-top tabloids, so it was probably not very accurate) about a young child who fell out of a third-floor window? Luckily she had a soft landing- unluckily it was on a neighbour's rottweiler. Needless to say, she got bit.

 

[OneWingedBird]

An old lady was killed in Leeds, cira mid 90s, by some dickhead kids throwing a breeze block from the top of some flats.

I bet that was a spatula job.

 

[Spookdaddy]

The Scudder novels tend to have rather "gnomic" titles -- nothing in the title to hang much of an association on: I can't remember what title belongs to this one about the serial-killer-on-a-mission.

A Ticket to the Boneyard, I think. Years since I read it, and I think it must be in a box somewhere as it doesn't seem to be up on my shelves.

(Small Town is my favourite Block novel - not a Scudder though).

I was expecting to read about someone dying in a clothing related incident.

So was I. I thought it was going to be something to do with that certain type of middle aged man who appears to assume that articles of woollen outerwear never require washing and then stands in supermarket queues smelling like a tramp whose just run a half-marathon in a rubber suit.

 

[oldrover]

I stood on mountain top yesterday and watched someone hurt themselves with a glove.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I stood on mountain top yesterday and watched someone hurt themselves with a glove.

Sir Ranulph, was it?

 

[oldrover]

No, this was more of your I can't carry out a simple task with something soft without harming myself sort of a thing.