A distraught 34-year-old woman threw herself from the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, plunging 100 feet from the pedestrian walkway near the Manhattan shoreline into the East River. An NYPD Harbor Unit quickly responded to the scene and pulled the suicidal woman from the water. Somehow she was relatively unscathed--without a scratch or a broken bone--and was treated at a hospital for aspirating some water, which is common in near drowning incidents.
Fewer than 10 people have ever survived a jump from the Brooklyn Bridge in its 125-year existence, including two people who jumped on separate occasion in 2004. The NYPD's Emergency Services Unit is generally in charge of dissuading people about to jump from bridges or other high places in the city; an ESU veteran claims the unit has approximately a 99% success rate of talking people to safety.
Taking a Brodie or pulling a Brodie became synonymous with insane stunts after tavern owner Steven Brodie bet his friend that he could survive a jump from the just-completed Brooklyn Bridge in 1886. He won $100 from his friend after jumping from the center of the bridge (35 feet higher than where yesterday's jump occurred). News of his death in 1898 as reported by the NY Times can be read here [pdf format].
