A 14 year old teenager committed suicide Thursday by throwing himself off the top of “The Vessel”, a tourist and arts attraction in the city of New York (
United States). The young boy is the fourth person to kill himself by rushing from the structure since it opened to the public in March 2019, says The Daily Beast. The 45-meter-high construction has been closed to the public, reports
NBC News.
“It’s hard to really understand how such a thing can happen,” responded Stephen Ross, the billionaire developer behind the “Vessel” and the housing complex that surrounds it in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. Stephen Ross explained that he is considering definitively ordering visitors’ access to the eight-story structure to the spiral staircases after this new suicide.
Measures had been taken
“The Vessel” had already been closed last January, just after a person had committed suicide there. Two other suicides had previously been deplored on the site at the beginning and at the end of the year 2020. The tourist attraction had finally reopened its doors last spring. Additional precautions were then taken. The number of security guards had been increased and they had been trained to identify potentially suicidal behavior.
Visitors had to be at least two to enter the structure. The teenager who died on Thursday was however accompanied by four members of his family, under whose eyes he committed suicide.
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