The Daily Populous Saturday June 15th, 2024 morning edition
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burnmenowz on June 14th, 2024 at 15:23 UTC »

"Photographer falls 1100 feet after selfie"

Vaxtin on June 14th, 2024 at 17:07 UTC »

Bro just work for the antenna companies and get paid to do this.

talldrseuss on June 14th, 2024 at 17:51 UTC »

NYC paramedic here.

For the wannabe free climbers out there....please don't do this.

About five or six years ago, I responded to one of the hotels in midtown. Go into the lobby and there's a teenager just screaming in the corner. Hotel security gestures me to the elevator and simply says "his friend is on the roof. don't think he's breathing".

We make our way up to the roof, and then even climb higher up over various HVAC equipment and other pieces of machinery located up there. The security guard points up to the water cooling tower and says the patient is in there. So i had to secure all my equipment, and then haul myself up to the top of this structure and i look down into the tank. I see the crumpled body down below, and I gingerly climb my way down to the patient.

I remember looking at his lifeless eyes staring up at the sky. The rain had started falling and each drop would hit his face, and slowly slide to the side, making it look like he was crying. I palpated his neck, noting how cold his skin already was with absolutely no signs or feeling of life. I confirmed no pulse and noted that the back of his head and neck were just all mush. I also noted the destroyed very expensive looking DSLR camera next to him. By then a police officer had joined me, and he quietly picked the camera up and put it in an evidence bag. I gave the officer the official time of death, and started making my way back down with the hotel security guard.

Along the way downstairs, the security guard tells me that they were posted in the lobby, when the friend of the patient came screaming through the hallways, and ran out the building. Then twenty minutes later, the friend came back in and while sobbing kept telling the hotel staff "oh my god, he's dead, he's dead".

Upon talking to the friend, i got a better idea of the sequence of events:

The two friends had been going around all week climbing into construction sites and sneaking into high rises, making their way to the roof, to shoot these photos. It was becoming a huge trend by then and these teenagers were hoping to cash into the fame. They had managed to sneak by hotel security and got to the top floor of the building. There's a gate that blocks the roof access that can only be unlocked by a key or if the fire alarm goes off. The thing was, the gate didn't go all the way up the ceiling. So the teenagers were able to climb the gate, and then slide over the top to the other side.

They made it up the roof, and then started climbing up to the highest point which was the water cooling tower. They were both perched on the edge of this tower, happily taking photos, when the patient went to slide over a bit, lost his footing on the slippery edge, and fell backwards. As per the friend, he watched his buddy slam head first onto the bottom of the tower, 40 feet below.

The friend completely panicked, and went straight downstairs, out the entrance of the hotel, and immediately hailed a cab. Turns out neither of the teenagers even lived in the city. As the cab drove down a few blocks, common sense kicked in and the teenager asked to be brought back to the hotel where he finally alerted the hotel staff.

I remember sitting with this teenager and the first thing he blurted was "he's dead, right?!". I confirmed this, and the teenager ended up sliding onto floor, curled up, and just kept crying. We kept trying to get the number of the patient's parents from his friend, but he was so distraught he couldn't even open his phone to get the number for us. Finally he was able to share the mom's number with the police. By now it was about 3AM in the morning. Even though the phone wasn't on speaker, i could hear the loud shriek and wailing as the cop informed the mother what happened.

The final thing i remember was a week later, my partner that worked the call with me stumbled across the teenager's obituary. The picture was of him smiling and holding his camera. It was a standard obituary, "lost him too soon", "taking pictures with God up in heaven" but the part that rubbed me the wrong way were the words "unfortunate accident". Yes, he didn't purposely mean to fall, but he put himself in a position where there was a higher liklihood he would fall. Not only that, if he feel forward instead of backwards into the tank, he would have fallen onto the street. The building was 100 stories tall. So a teenage body falling from that height would pretty much guarantee he would kill whoever was on the ground that was unlucky enough to be under the falling teenager. On top of that, I had to climb into this unsafe area, along with the cop. All because the two teenagers were chasing clout.

Sorry for the long write up. That call was unfortunately no the first time nor the last time something like that happened. Free climbers in an urban environment are idiotic, not only are you putting yourself at risk, you are putting the lives of those on the ground and the emergency service personnel that have to get to you at risk also.

Edit: sorry I wasn't able to get back to all the comments, ended up having a busy shift. Was definitely surprised to see this explode to the top, didn't think anyone would want to read through the novel I wrote.

To clear some things up. I can't confirm nor deny if the articles posted align with this story. What I will admit is my sense of time got all messed up thanks to working the pandemic. 20+ years on the job has made a lot of my memories sort of blend together

To those accusing me of using AI, I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or just be further confused. My whole schooling during the 90's revolved around writing papers. Having a parent that was also a professor meant my punishments also revolved around writing papers. So yes, I can write, in my opinion, pretty ok. I would hope the numerous spelling and grammatical errors would prove this wasn't AI generated, but I guess not.

Finally, sincerely thank you for the compliments. Please dial them back, I suck at handling them. There was nothing heroic in this story. I was just a witness to a horrific tragedy. Support your local EMS agencies, they are a necessary service that gets overshadowed by fire and PD. To my EMS colleagues: don't ignore your mental health. When scenes from those calls start flashing in your every day life, go talk to someone. I'm always willing to talk to someone if you just need to decompress