Woman, 26, leaps to death from 54th-floor Times Square rooftop bar and lands on 27th floor balcony
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MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY: A woman died after falling to her death from a hotel rooftop bar near Times Square on October 12, Wednesday afternoon, said police. Around 3.30 pm, the 26-year-old woman was "seen jumping" from Bar 54, which is located on the 54th floor of the Hyatt Centric on West 45th Street close to Seventh Avenue.
Police reported that she fell 27 floors and landed on a balcony on the 27th floor below. The woman was discovered on the balcony unconscious and unresponsive, and emergency personnel pronounced her dead on the spot. The medical examiner for the city will decide the official cause of death. It wasn't immediately clear if the woman was a guest at the hotel or was merely stopping by the rooftop spot, which advertises on its website as the "highest open-air hotel rooftop bar" in the area. The hotel's website describes Bar 54 as being on the 54th floor and having "stunning river-to-river views of the Chrysler Building and lower Manhattan."
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"She walked right by me and I didn’t think anything of it. She was a young girl with a reservation for the bar," a hotel staff told Daily News. The woman suddenly stood up, made her way outside to the terrace, and seated herself close to the glass railing. Customers expressed alarm and informed staff that the woman had jumped over the railing.
"Everybody came running saying, 'She jumped! She jumped!' At first I thought they were playing," the hotel staff said. The woman died after she fell to a balcony on the 27th floor. "The woman cleaning on the 27th floor heard the crash and found her body on the balcony. We're lucky she didn't land on the sidewalk. It's crazy," the hotel staff said.
The Hyatt Centric sent their sympathies to the woman's family and forwarded all media queries to the NYPD. "We are deeply saddened by the situation that occurred this afternoon at our hotel and our thoughts go out to the individual’s family and those who have been affected. We are working closely with local authorities and all inquiries should be directed to the New York Police Department," Tom Blundell, general manager of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, said in a statement.