NEW YORK (Reuters) – A would-be suicide jumper in New York was
alive on Monday after leaping from a ninth-floor window but landing
in a giant heap of garbage uncollected since the city's massive
snowstorm a week ago.
Vangelis Kapatos, 26, was hospitalized in critical but stable
condition after jumping from his apartment on West 45th Street on
Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
Sanitation workers have not collected trash since the December
26 storm dumped more than a foot and a half of snow on the city.
Mounds of garbage several feet high line many sidewalks.
"Everybody is complaining that the trash hasn't been picked up,"
Kapatos' aunt said on Monday. "But me, I'm thankful that it was
never picked up."
Police said the trash bags below broke Kapatos' fall and that he
left no suicide note before jumping.
The Department of Sanitation, which was only resuming garbage
collecting on Monday, estimates 77,000 tons of trash have been left
uncollected since the storm.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he expects workers to be caught up
with trash collection by Friday.
"It will take a few days to catch up," Bloomberg said. "But
they're out there today and hopefully in the next three to four
days, we'll be done with it."
Katharina Capatos, who spells her surname differently from her
nephew, told Reuters he was severely depressed and had spent a
month in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital before being
released last week.
He also was worried about the possibility of being evicted from
his $572-a-month rent-stabilized apartment, she said.
Kapatos' eviction hearing was scheduled to proceed on Tuesday,
according to the New York City Housing Court.