Last night, Saturday, February 10, an 18-year-old woman was found dead after allegedly jumping from a window on the 5th floor of NYU’s Barney Building on Stuyvesant Street, according to the police.
It’s not clear if she was an NYU student, but the six-story building houses the art department’s studios, classrooms and offices of that university.
According to the police, they received a 911 call of a jumper down around 7:30pm. They promptly rushed to Stuyvesant Street and they found the young woman outside, unconscious and unresponsive in a bloody pool, her body in severe trauma. Investigators later deduced she jumped from one of the higher windows in the building.
She was immediately brought to Bellevue Hospital, but there was nothing to be done. She was pronounced dead.
“I just heard a thump and a girl scream. My roommate asked someone and someone said [they] jumped off and landed in that triangle area,” one of the witnesses, Justina Sung, 30, said to NY Post reporters pointing to a reduced green space enclosed by a railing next to the NYU building.
New York University is well known for its student suicides, there have been at least 18 in the past two decades. These have occurred most frequently in the Bobst Library, though also at various other locations on its scattered campus. In 2013 the college made physical changes to its campus to prevent students from jumping off university grounds.
In a 2019 article in The Washington Square News , one of the student publications, the student/author claimed that indeed, NYU is secretive about the exact number of suicides that have occurred on its campus. Though imprecise, according to some sources, that number could be as many as three in one semester, certainly at least two in 2018. She writes that “NYU puts its reputation before student wellness.”
This latest suicide appears to be just one of a long string of tragedies at the institution.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
