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#Post#: 5447--------------------------------------------------
HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washington
Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPHIC*
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:37 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/JZR5Spq.jpg
He jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson
River.
#Post#: 5448--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:42 pm
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HTML https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/1511/details
HTML https://i.imgur.com/FSXwpuV.jpg
Unidentified Person / NamUs #UP1511 Male, White / Caucasian
Date Found September 5, 2002
Location Found Hudson River, New Jersey
Estimated Age Range 45-55 Years
Case Information
Case Numbers
NCMEC Number--
ME/C Case Number 02021370
Demographics
Sex Male
Race / EthnicityWhite / Caucasian
Estimated Age Group Adult - Pre 60
Estimated Age Range 45-55 Years
Estimated Year of Death 2002
Estimated PMI--
Height 5' 11"(71 inches) , Estimated
Weight 210 lbs, Estimated
Circumstances
Type Unidentified Deceased
Date Found September 5, 2002
NamUs Case Created April 1, 2008
Agency QA Reviewed--
Location Found Map
General Location--Hudson River, New Jersey
County Bergen County
GPS Coordinates--
Circumstances of Recovery Jumped from George Washington Bridge
into Hudson River.
Details of Recovery
Inventory of Remains All parts recovered
Condition of Remains Recognizable face
Physical Description
Hair Color Gray or Partially Gray
Head Hair Description Gray or Partially Gray
Body Hair Description Hirsute.
Facial Hair Description Clean shaven.
Left Eye Color Brown
Right Eye Color Brown
Eye Description--
Distinctive Physical Features
Scar/mark
Well healed square scar around umbilicus. Well healed small pox
vaccination scar on upper left arm
Clothing and Accessories
Accessories
$48.00 in pockets. Black back support. Metro card.
Near the Body
Clothing
Pair of socks with the letters "SOORMARTENRAJ" written on one
sock; shorts by Polo Jeans, size 42, and a black belt with a
tether at the end of which is an ID card holder; white T-shirt
size XXL and jockey shorts (Fruit of the Loom).
On the Body
Footwear
White Nike sneakers (size 13).
On the Body
Jewelry
Casio watch.
On the Body
Investigating Agencies
Palisades Interstate Parkway
--
--Bergen Co. ME Office
Case Contributors
Anna Delaney, Forensic Anthropologist(609) 584-5054 ext. 5656 |
lppdelaan@gw.njsp.org
New Jersey State Police Office of Forensic Services
(609) 584-5054
#Post#: 5449--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:43 pm
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George Washington Bridge
The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension
bridge spanning the Hudson River between the Washington Heights
neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, and the borough of
Fort Lee in New Jersey.Wikipedia
Address: George Washington Bridge, Fort Lee, NJ 07024
Construction started: October 1927
HTML https://i.imgur.com/ogWhPV5.jpg
[img]
HTML https://www.google.com/maps/vt/data=3ZoHM6m348ESxTuo-5481z7hFc7pEC8trm1nR2qULlruiQWfsNpeFTNbRUxMVld7Iv6KsdxS3Hef3WAGUJnkqaQ-Fx85LG81aNvct-amWEnpynXuOnFtLMqul4H3a7JLIjeNhrITX7uiQZH5sEbaRtOcEjaaMhro_QoFwzLeKtkIUznUXt2rlPV242wb3kmcVZPZ8Nnc5jC08i15NUgF_RwA0HgB9gKqyRqqYfjJhHRtTG7ZOUaZqykohowSR7yFnR-V[/img]
#Post#: 5450--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:45 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/8luR0bo.jpg
HTML https://i.imgur.com/VYlEd9m.png
#Post#: 5451--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:46 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/3WgYBMh.gif
#Post#: 5452--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:48 pm
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Pedestrian Walkway
HTML https://i.imgur.com/UCJtcrr.jpg
HTML https://i.imgur.com/Dnj6a77.jpg
#Post#: 5453--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:49 pm
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HTML https://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ss...icide_fence_coming_to_gwb_by_end_of_year.html
After 86 years and countless deaths, suicide fence coming to GWB
Updated September 18, 2017 at 4:11 PM; Posted September 18, 2017
at 2:51 PM
People travel on the pedestrian south walkway of the George
Washington Bridge, which will close on Sept. 25 for installation
of temporary protective fencing.
A temporary "pedestrian safety fence" intended to prevent
suicides will be installed starting on Sept. 25 on the south
side of the George Washington Bridge, announced Monday after a
tour of the span by high ranking Port Authority officials.
Installation of the fence on the span's upper-level south
sidewalk means it will be temporarily closed to pedestrians and
bicyclists for three months, officials said. So far this year,
agency "initiatives" have been credited with "intervening in 45
cases where emotionally disturbed people were considering doing
themselves harm on the bridge," officials said.
Pedestrians and cyclists will be detoured to the bridge's north
sidewalk. Officials said the detour will result in a temporary
inconvenience to cyclists, who will have to roll their bikes up
a channel adjacent to a staircase or carry them to reach the
north sidewalk.
Why isn't there a suicide fence on the GWB?
Port Authority engineers developed an "innovative, alternate
design" that involves hanging the fencing from the bridge
suspender cables which made a temporary fence possible, said
Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman.
Previously, a temporary fence would have had to be anchored to
the sidewalk, which would require extensive work on the sidewalk
to provide a stable fencing structure, he said.
A permanent fence will be installed on the north side of the
bridge when its suspender cable ropes are replaced in 2018. When
that work is finished and the north walkway reopens, permanent
fencing will be installed on the south side when suspender ropes
are replaced on that side of the bridge, officials said.
The change followed a tour by recently elected Authority
Chairman Kevin O'Toole and Executive Director Rick Cotton, who
reviewed the $1.9 billion "Restore the George" program to
rebuild and renew key pieces of the 87-year-old span's
infrastructure.
Work started on the multi-phase bridge project in 2015. The
decision accelerates installation of fencing on the south
walkway by four years, according to a 2016 GWB project schedule.
#Post#: 5454--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:51 pm
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HTML https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/nyregion/george-washington-bridge-suicide-fence.html
At George Washington Bridge, a Fence Rises to Deter Suicides
Capt. Emilio Gonzalez read, aloud, some statistics for 2017. He
repeated one: “Sixty-eight saves.”
In the hierarchy of the Port Authority Police Department,
Captain Gonzalez is the commanding officer responsible for the
George Washington Bridge, whose ceaseless parade of cars and
trucks make it one of the world’s busiest. The figure he
repeated was for suicide attempts that were blocked by his
officers, for the George Washington Bridge, more than most
bridges in the New York area, draws people who have decided
death is the only option.
A suicide attempt is thwarted at the bridge once nearly every
five days.
Fifteen people have jumped to their deaths there in 2017.
Now Captain Gonzalez has a new tool intended to prevent suicides
from the bridge, an 11-foot-high fence connected to netting that
forms a canopy over the pathway beyond the traffic lanes. Until
now, the only barrier along the pathway was a barricade-high
railing.
The Port Authority has officers who monitor cameras trained on
the pathway and who can dispatch other officers, even a fully
equipped emergency unit, if they see someone among the runners
and bicyclists who arouses their suspicions. Until now, that
meant someone who lingered too close to the railing for too
long.
The chain-link fence is too tall to scale quickly, and getting
around the canopy would require unusual strength and agility.
The Port Authority installed the fence and the netting beginning
in September on the pathway along the south side of the bridge,
but they are only temporary.
A permanent fence will be installed later, after the completion
of a permanent fence on the north side as part of the
agency’s“Restoring the George” rehabilitation program for the
86-year-old bridge.
“I don’t think that’s something anyone thinks about when they
design a bridge,” Captain Gonzalez said. “What was there was
what was designed when the bridge was built, the height on most
bridges. Nothing unusual.”
The work on the north side began when the temporary fence on the
south side was completed this month, eight months after work
began on a “suicide deterrent net” under the Golden Gate Bridge
in San Francisco, another long bridge that attracts people
contemplating killing themselves. The net, made of stainless
steel, will reach out 20 feet from the bridge.
At the George Washington Bridge, 2017’s tally of 15 suicides so
far is three more than in 2016 and three fewer than in 2015.
The last suicide was on Nov. 8, when a 38-year-old man from
Woodside, Queens, stopped his car on the lower level of the
bridge. There is no pedestrian walkway on the lower level, only
a maintenance catwalk and a barricade-height railing, which the
man quickly climbed over.
The temporary fence, on the upper level, is anchored to the
bridge. “It’s a very good feat of engineering because you have a
person who’s hellbent on jumping, it’s going to be very
difficult to climb the device and get over,” Captain Gonzalez
said, “and by the time that happens, we’ll pick up on the CCTV
cameras. We’ll intervene and more than likely save the person.”
Suicidologists say that barriers on bridges are effective tools
for preventing suicides. A 2015 analysis published in the
journal The Lancet Psychiatry averaged 18 suicide studies and
concluded that placing safety nets under known “hot spots” for
suicide reduced death rates. The study found that the death rate
from suicide was an average of 5.8 a year before such nets were
installed to an average of 2.4 deaths a year after, a decline of
58 percent.
Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman, the vice president for research of
the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said in an
interview that putting a barrier on one bridge did not normally
lead to higher suicide rates on nearby bridges.
On the George Washington Bridge, signs on the pathway urge
people considering suicide to seek help, and there are call
boxes that dial a suicide hotline. But Dr. Richard T. McKeon,
the head of the suicide prevention branch of the federal
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said
that such phones “should be considered a complement to, not a
substitute for, a barrier.”
“There are people who are just not going to use the phone if
it’s there,” he said. “Some might, but many won’t.”
Besides the 68 “saves” on the George Washington Bridge, another
37 suicide attempts that were thwarted were counted as
“investigations,” meaning that the Port Authority police
received word that someone who was suicidal was going to the
bridge. Captain Gonzalez said the police tracked them down,
usually before they were anywhere near the bridge, using
technology that picks up signals from cellphones.
“People leave a note” that someone sees, he said, “or they tell
a relative or just mention in passing that they want to come to
the George Washington Bridge to do it.”
Officers assigned to patrol the bridge each day have been
trained in crisis intervention. “They’re trained to notice
people and question people who appear to be somewhat depressed,”
he said. “That has resulted in identifying people who are
exhibiting signs of suicides.”
The fence “buys us time,” Captain Gonzalez said. “We have more
time to get to them and save them.”
#Post#: 5455--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:52 pm
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HTML https://www.wnyc.org/story/every-35-days-someone-attempts-suicide-george-washington-bridge/
Every 3.5 Days, Someone Attempts Suicide Off the George
Washington Bridge
Jan 29, 2015 · by Sarah Gonzalez
Every 3.5 days someone makes their way to the pedestrian walkway
of the George Washington Bridge to attempt suicide. The only
barrier between them and the Hudson River 25 stories below is a
waist-high metal handrail.
“There’s no fencing, there’s no netting, there’s no wall,” said
Ron Shindel, the commanding officer of the Port Authority police
unit on the bridge. “The bridge was opened in 1931 and I don’t
think they had this problem back then.”
Suicide attempts off the George Washington Bridge have doubled
over the last year and have been on the rise since 2011, when
there were three deaths.
Last year, police prevented 74 people from jumping. The 18
people who did jump last year all died.
“I don’t know anywhere where police officers patrol a mile-long
post and have to watch for a person jumping on a bridge,”
Shindel said. “It’s difficult.”
The bridge is suspended 40 feet higher than the Golden Gate
Bridge in California. The fall is lethal — if you survive the
injuries.
“There are conflicting and opposite and whirlpool currents under
that bridge,” Shindel said. “They’re not going to survive the
water at that point, either.”
Last spring, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
approved up to $47 million for a project to add pedestrian
safety fencing along the walkway. It will take eight years to
complete.
“There is a long time between now and then,” said Richard
McKeon, the head of the suicide prevention branch of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. “That’s a lot of people
who could die.”
Erecting barriers on iconic bridges around the world has reduced
the number of jumping deaths — in some cases by at least half
and in others by much more.
McKeon said a fence is the most effective method — even on a
heavily-patrolled bridge.
“[Patrols] depend on being at the right place at the right time
and being able to observe something literally just in the nick
of time,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, Chris Valens, said the decision to add the fencing came
from within the agency, after recognizing the spike in suicides
and attempts. The plan is part of a larger $1.3 billion project
to replace the suspension ropes on the bridge.
“Plans to install the higher barriers build upon the Port
Authority’s efforts in recent years to increase bridge patrols,
improve lighting, install security cameras and call boxes and
enhance the overall security and safety at our bridges,” Valens
wrote in an email.
Fencing will also be installed on the Bayonne Bridge and
Goethals Bridge.
The police unit that patrols the George Washington Bridge
received 26 new rookie officers at the end of September.
Eighteen of them have already talked at least one person off the
ledge.
One rookie, Catherine Asavedo, saved four people in just three
months. Officer Samantha Koch has made two saves.
“It happens so often, we were told, ‘You will encounter it,’”
she said.
In three months rookie officer Samantha Koch, 28, has talked
down two people from jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
Both attempts took place on the 29th of the month.
Her most recent save took place right before the New Year. She
was patrolling the bridge in a police car when she noticed a
woman in a fur coat who looked out of place.
“I said, ‘How are you? What are you doing up here? Is everything
okay?’ And she was leaning over the rail and she turned around
and said, ‘I think you know what I’m doing up here.’ And she
just burst out crying.”
The woman had come to the bridge the week prior but the walkway
was closed that day because it was icy. She told Koch she had
had a bad year and that she was having relationship issues.
“I pretty much let her know that that’s not the way to get back
at somebody for hurting you! The best way is to do better. To
feel good,” Koch said.
She took her hand and guided her away from the railing and into
her police car.
“I was able to connect with her because she’s a 26-year-old
female, I’m a 28-year-old female, so I think it was actually
good that I was there,” she said. “But you can’t ask for that.
It’s never going to be planned. You don’t know what officer is
going to be out there.”
About 67 percent of the people who go to the bridge to jump are
males and 68 percent are white. Incidents are almost evenly
divided between New Yorkers and New Jerseyans.
Police investigate every threat made drunkenly at a bar and any
Facebook comment about jumping. The case remains open until they
either locate the person who threatened suicide or until they
locate the body.
#Post#: 5456--------------------------------------------------
Re: HUDSON RIVER JOHN DOE: WM, 45-55, jumped from George Washing
ton Bridge - 5 September 2002 *GRAPH
By: Akoya Date: May 17, 2020, 4:54 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/NZHt1mM.jpg
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