WEST NYACK, N.Y. — A Rockland man in his early 20s died last night after jumping over a fourth-floor railing at the Palisades Center mall in an apparent suicide, Clarkstown police said.
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The man landed on the bottom floor of the mall, which leads to the parking garage, police said. A yellow tarp was placed over the body, which lay sprawled at the foot of an escalator. The incident happened about 7 p.m.
The man, who had not yet been identified last night, was pronounced dead at the scene. He appeared to be alone at the time, police said.
“We’re looking at it as a suicide,” police Lt. Glenn Dietrich said at the scene.
Officers cordoned off the area with yellow tape and urged onlookers to keep moving.
Banana Republic, a store near where the man landed, closed 45 minutes early. Employees said at least one sales associate had witnessed the fall.
“I heard a thud, and I saw three girls running away from the railing,” said Shiny Thomas, a cashier at United Colors of Benetton on the first floor. “There was a lot of screaming and jumping back.”
Thomas said she ran out and saw a man with long hair lying on the floor.
One vendor at the mall said the impact sounded like a car crash.
“I didn’t see it, but I heard it. It sounded like a car crashing into a building,” said Danny Gonzalez, who works at Sunglass Hut. “People were running everywhere.”
Leigh Smolenski of New City said the railings at the mall have troubled her since she began shopping there years ago.
“They’re too low. If someone is taller, they have that much more access to go over if there’s a fight or if they get pushed,” she said yesterday, looking from the first floor at where the body had landed.
She said the incident reflects the economic crisis.
“This is just an example of what’s been happening,” she said. “People are losing their jobs. It pulls people down, and they don’t know what to do.”
This appears to have been the second suicide at the mega-mall off Route 59, which opened more than a decade ago. In February 2005, a 23-year-old New City man jumped to his death from the mall’s fourth floor.
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