KANAGAWA (TR) – A high school girl collided with a female pedestrian after taking a plunge from the roof of a department store in Yokohama City on Saturday.
Both the woman and the girl were later confirmed dead, Kanagawa Prefectural Police said, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Aug. 31).
At around 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, the girl leaped from the 12th floor roof of NEWoMan Yokohama, located at the West Exit of JR Yokohama Station. As she fell, the girl collided with the woman, 32, as she walked with a friend.
A passerby then alerted police. “Two women are lying on the ground, bleeding,” the caller said. “They appear to have jumped.”
The girl was confirmed dead at a hospital about an hour later, just after 7:00 p.m. About two and a half hours after that, the woman who was struck by the girl also died.
“It’s a place that’s always busy”
The scene was crowded with many people at the time, and the roof of NEWoMan Yokohama was open to the public until 9:00 p.m.
A woman in her 20s who was meeting someone in front of the station told reporters, “Blue tarps had been laid out and police officers were gathered there. It’s a place that’s always busy, so I was surprised when I saw the news.”
The woman who was caught in the accident had reportedly come to hang out with three friends. Police believe that the girl who leaped was attempting suicide and that the woman was hit by accident.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is urging people who are troubled to not keep it to themselves, but to use helplines such as the “Unified Mental Health Consultation Hotline” or “Lifeline.”
