Man falls to death from downtown L.A. apartment

Police are investigating the death this morning of an elderly man who fell from his 10th-story apartment in the Alexandria Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Officers called to the 500 block of South Spring Street about 5:30 a.m. initially investigated the death as a suicide, said Officer April Harding, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. A recent string of suicides in the area, the city’s Old Bank District, has confounded residents.

But coroner’s officials say the death appears to be accidental, and that a section of the fire escape outside the man’s apartment apparently gave way and was found on the sidewalk near the man’s body, according to Investigator Mario Sainz of the coroner’s office. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

The man’s name will not be released until relatives are notified, but Sainz described him as white and about 80 years old.

Attempts to reach officials with the Alexandria Hotel were unsuccessful. The hotel, once a glamorous magnet for Hollywood celebrities and American presidents, is now an apartment complex with low-income housing that recently underwent a major renovation.

A neighbor who lived below the man wrote on a downtown blog, “His body laying outside my window is the most disturbing thing I have ever seen.”

--- Seema Mehta

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Comments

[Brady Westwater]

First, a correction. In Hector Tobar's superbly written and researched article there was an error in geography, which has been repeated in this article. Tobar identified the site of several - though not the majority - of the recent suicides around 6th and Main as being in the heart of the Old Bank District.

He also describes the history of that District. The problem is that the Old Bank District is only ten years old and it is the name Tom Gilmore gave to loft buildings he developed from the south side of 4th along Main and Spring to the north side of 5th.

The area that 6th and Spring is in the heart of is really the Spring Street Financial District and that is also the neighborhood, which the Alexandria Hotel is located in. Or – if one looks at the larger area including Main and Broadway - it would be in the Center of Historic Downtown, which has superseded the name of, Historic Core.

Second, talk in the neighborhood all that morning was that the body was found well into the street - which seemed not to fit in with a fall - and that there appeared to be no visible missing railing though which anyone could have fallen.

Later talk was that the metal … supposedly…. had come from the top of the railing which would only have come off if someone had climbed to the top of the railing and then… jumped.

So I’m curious what the final determination will be since the first reports on the last suicide – which was also first called an accidental fall - were never supported by physical evidence.