A 40-year-old man from Coral Gables, Fla., made his fatal leap just before 9 am today after trying to check in to the hotel, law enforcement sources said.
A hotel employee told him that they did not have a room for him, so he gave them his credit card, then made his way up to the closed sun deck on the 22nd floor.
A hotel employee stopped him and called security, who escorted him down to the restaurant on the bottom floor.
NyPost reported that The troubled went downstairs with the security officer and ate pancakes at the restaurant like nothing happened, then after finishing his food he bolted back up to the 22nd floor sun deck, where he ran by the gym and spa, jumped on a ledge, and vaulted himself onto the street below, sources said.
While all of these were happening 33-year-old Engel Nicasio was on the driver seat of a luxury SUV sipping his coffee and waiting for his passenger. Then he heard a “loud boom” that made him duck.
“I was inside the vehicle having a cup of coffee and a bagel. I had been standing outside the vehicle minutes earlier. I heard a big bang,” Angel Nicasio, 37, of Washington Heights, said.
“Hotel security came over and helped me out of the vehicle. I saw a man’s body. His body was separated at the waist. It was frightening, I can’t believe it happened,” the professional driver of 5 years said.
“God was on my side, if someone had been sitting in the passenger side something really bad would have happened, the roof dent is very deep.”
The passenger-side of the Cadillac Escalade was crushed by the impact of the fall.
Nicasio said that he may take some time off to recover from the shock.
Another witness described a horrific crash before he also saw the dead man.
“The body [was] all twisted on the sidewalk,” said Armando Aiellano, 50, an air-conditioning repair man who was on a coffee break.
“It’s terrible. He hit the car and then [fell] onto the sidewalk.”
It was not immediately clear if the suicide had been staying at the hotel, where rooms run from $1,000 to $4,000 per night.
