The youngest known jumper is 5-year-old Marilyn DeMont in 1945, she was told to jump by her father who followed her.įor comparison, the reported third-most popular place to commit suicide in the world, Aokigahara Forest in Japan, has a record of 108 bodies, found within the forest in 2004, with an average of 30 a year. The rate of incidence of attempts has risen to nearly one every other day. The total count for the year 2013 was 46, with an additional 118 attempts prevented, making it the year with the highest tally so far. The most suicides in one month were in August 2013, when 10 jumped. By 2012 the unofficial count exceeded 1,600 (in which the body was recovered or someone saw the jump) and new suicides were occurring about once every two weeks, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis. Consequently, Marin County coroner Ken Holmes asked local media to stop reporting the total number of jumpers. 1000, Eric Atkinson, jumped on July 3, 1995.Įarlier in 1995, a local shock jock had offered a case of Snapple to the family of the 1000th suicide victim. The side facing the Pacific is closed to pedestrians.Īn official suicide count was kept until the year 1995, sorted according to which of the bridge’s 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest when he or she jumped.The official count ended on Jon the 997th jump jumper No. Most suicidal jumps from the bridge have occurred on the side facing the bay. About 5% of the jumpers survive the initial impact but generally drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water. Most of the jumpers die due to impact trauma. The deck is about 245 feet (75 m) above the water.Īfter a fall of four seconds, jumpers hit the water at around 75 mph (120 km/h). The Golden Gate Bridge, referred to by Krista Tippett as a “suicide magnet”, is the second-most used suicide site/suicide bridge in the world, after the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (see List of suicide sites). Although it had previously been considered impractical to build a suicide barrier, in 2014, the Bridge’s directors approved a proposal for a net below the bridge’s deck, extending out either side, rather than side barriers at the railings as had long been proposed. In 2013, 118 potential jumpers were talked down from their attempt and did not jump.Ī number of measures are in place to discourage people from jumping, including telephone hotlines and patrols by emergency personnel and bridge workers. Some die instantly from internal injuries, while others drown or die of hypothermia.The Golden Gate bridge’s death toll has since been surpassed only by that of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China. The four-second fall from the Golden Gate Bridge sends a person plunging 245 feet (75 m) at 75 miles per hour (121 km/h) to hit the waters of the San Francisco Bay “with the force of a speeding truck meeting a concrete building.” Jumping off the bridge holds at least a 98 percent fatality rate and it is speculated the fatality rate is actually higher than 98% because of people whose bodies are never found after they make the jump.Īs of 2013, it is estimated that 34 people have survived after jumping. Sign promoting a 24/7 crisis text line on the Golden Gate Bridgeīetween 19, an estimated 1,400 bodies were recovered of people who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, located in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States.
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