Man Dies After Jumping From Balcony in LA Mall and Landing on Person Below

American Brand shopping mall in Los Angeles. Screenshot/Googlemaps

A man died after jumping off a seventh floor balcony in a Los Angeles shopping mall and landing on a man who was walking below.

Police confirmed that an unnamed suspected suicide jumper had died in hospital around three hours after jumping from a balcony at American Brand in Glendale, according to local reports.

Dan Suttles, spokesperson for the Glendale Police Department told the Los Angeles Times that  the jumper landed on a man who was walking below the balcony with his son.

The father suffered non-life-threatening injuries, while his son was unharmed.

“It appears to be an attempted suicide, but we’re also looking into the possibility that it could be something else,” said Suttles,

Reports do not indicate where in the mall the incident occurred on whether the man was a resident of one of the Americana’s residential units.

According to KABC, Rick J. Caruso, the owner and operator of the Americana, said in a statement: “I am heartbroken by this incident and everyone at Caruso is thinking about and praying for these individuals and their families. We are working with local law enforcement and will provide additional information, as appropriate.”

According to KABC, the child suffered minor injuries.

According to City News, the jumper was in his twenties, and the man he landed on was aged 49.

City News reports that the father was with two children, not one as reported in other media.

The suicide rate in California is below the national average of 14 deaths per hundred thousand, standing at 10.5 in 2017, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

According to AFSP statistics, by age, the lowest suicide rate is among 14-25 year-olds (excluding younger children), and the highest among those aged 85 or above, which is about a quarter higher.

But the difference in suicide rates between ages is not nearly as stark as the difference between ethnicities.

“In 2017, the highest U.S. age-adjusted suicide rate was among Whites (15.85) and the second-highest rate was among American Indians and Alaska Natives (13.42),” notes the report.

“Much lower and roughly similar rates were found among Black or African Americans (6.61) and Asians and Pacific Islanders (6.59).”

Fifty percent of suicides are carried out with a firearm, 14 percent with poisoning, and 28 percent with suffocation.

But it is the drama of suicide by jumping off public buildings, bridges, and onto train tracks that often catches people’s attention, along with heroic tales of intervention.

One veteran train employee in Canada, John Paul Attard, has saved six people from suicide.

In 2017, he was caught on video enlisting the help of the whole platform to pull a 23-year-old man back from the brink of his suicidal thoughts as he sat on the northbound track bed at a Toronto station.

Sitting down on the edge of the platform, Attard talks to the man, telling him to repeat the words “I am strong,” in the video.

Turning to the groups of passengers on each platform in turn he got them to chant “I am strong” towards the man.

The man appears to calm down, he puts his arms around Attard and the crowd claps as police safely led him off the tracks.

In August last year, Fort Worth police released a video of officers rescuing a suicidal woman who was standing precariously close to the edge of an overpass.

One patrol officer yells to her: “Don’t do it!”

The Fort Worth Police Department released video from dashboard and body cameras via its Facebook page on Aug. 23.

Officers Justin Henry and Trae Cierzan repeatedly ask for the woman’s name. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

“It does matter. It does matter,” Henry tells her.