A 15-year-old boy who was once a part-time employee at Penn committed suicide last Wednesday by jumping from the 16th floor of a building on Market Street.
The boy, whose name has not been released because he is a juvenile, jumped from the sixteenth floor of the office building located at 3535 Market Street at about 6:30 p.m., after kicking out the glass in one of the windows.
Members of both the University and city police departments were dispatched to the location, and the boy was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Philadelphia Medical Examiners Office cited the cause of death as multiple injuries.
According to University Police officials, the boy -- who was a resident of Philadelphia -- was in the building to see his psychiatrist, who works for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
The boy had been receiving psychiatric care for some time before his death.
Shortly before the suicide, a pedestrian near the building told a security guard that there were noises coming from one of the top floors, and that it sounded like someone was trying to break a window.
The security guard noticed glass on the ground, and in looking up to the source of the glass, saw the boy attempting to jump. The guard went up to the floor where the jumper was, but the boy jumped shortly after the guard arrived.
The floor of the building from which he jumped was deserted at the time due to recent renovations in that area of the building.
The juvenile had been a part-time worker in Wharton's Vance Hall from June of last year until this April, when the position was terminated due to cutbacks. However, loss of the job is believed to be unrelated to the boy's ending his own life.
As a student in a local religiously-affiliated high school, the boy would have been entering his junior year with the highest grade point average in his class.
This suicide comes less than two months after a freshman at Drexel University committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the Sheraton University City Hotel, located just a few blocks away on 36th and Chestnut streets. The cause of death in his case was also cited as multiple injuries.
