The New York City Police Department was called to the skyscraper that’s home to Saturday Night Live, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and of course, 30 Rock. They helped rescue a man who was perched on a ledge and threatening to jump from the 70th floor. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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So how dramatic did it get?
The man’s near-death experience was enough to bring busy Midtown to a near standstill, as people gawked and took pictures while he threatened to jump to the sidewalk 70 stories below.
Cops quickly arrived and climbed out to the concrete ledge in harnesses to talk to the man, a 23-year-old tourist from Las Vegas named Jorge Ruiz, for nearly an hour before he decided to come back inside. At one point, Ruiz, who had hopped a 6-foot barrier to reach his perch 850 feet above the street, was wearing a bandanna tied around his face and was writing on a pad while rolling around and dangling his feet off the building.
An NBC employee tweeted a pic of the dramatic scene, which took place near the observation deck of the building. A live feed of the perilous situation was being fed inside to the NBC newsroom.
Accoring to the New York Post, which has a video of Ruiz on the ledge, he was distraught over losing his job and seemed “committed” to jumping.
“At one point, he stood up and put his hands on the glass,” said Detective James Coll, who talked Ruiz down along with fellow Detective Shawn Soler.
“We weren’t really sure if he was going to push himself off or if he was going to climb over,” he added.
Soler told the paper that after he was rescued, Ruiz was “very apologetic” for wasting everyone’s time. He was taken to Bellevue Hostital for a psychiatric evaluation.
Roots drummer Questlove, inside getting ready for his nightly gig on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, took to Twitter to beg the man to live.
“Hey dude on my building room. Don’t Jump!” he wrote.
Thankfully, he didn’t.
