A window washer who was leaning out a fifth-floor apartment without a harness plunged to his death in Tribeca Tuesday afternoon in front of shocked onlookers, cops said.
The man, whose identity wasn’t immediately released, was leaning out of the Hanover River House to clean a window at 335 Greenwich St. when he fell about 1:09 p.m.
One witness said he was worried when he saw the man hanging out the window.
“He was sitting outside the window, he was holding the window with the left hand and he was cleaning the window with his right hand,” said Edin Arias, 39, a carpenter who was working on a building across the street.
He said he and his friend heard the man believed to be in his 30s fall.
“When I came down I opened the door to the van and I heard the noise and I just knew he fell down,” Arias said.
Arias, holding back tears, said the man was still conscious when he ran over.
“I told him, ‘If you hear me, you need to move your head, because you know Jesus, he wants to give you one more chance,’ and he moved his head,” he said. “I prayed for him,” he said.
Witnesses confirmed that the man worked for Aerial Window Cleaning, LLC. A message left at a phone number for the company was not immediately returned.
Another witness also saw the man working without a harness.
“He was hanging backwards out of the window, washing it,” said Orie Cipollaro, 45, an electrician who walking down Greenwich St. on the way to his next job.
“He was just lying there, he wasn’t moving at all,” Cipollaro said. “Everybody was in disbelief, they kept saying, ‘Oh no we didn’t just see that, we didn’t really see that.'”
He said EMTs arrived quickly and began doing chest compressions. The man was taken to Presbyterian Hospital and died.
“I’m kind of hoping by some miracle he makes it, because that’s the only way I’m going to be able to sleep tonight,” he said. “It was hard to see, it’s very upsetting.”
Another witness, John Cataneo, 46, is a union plumber who was sitting in his car at the corner of Jay and Greenwich Sts. when he saw the man fall.
“People were calling 911,” he said. “It was a really gruesome scene, his legs were twisted his arms were bent and he was bleeding from his hands, it was very gruesome,” he said.
“I don’t think he was saying anything, someone was trying to speak with him, but I honestly don’t think he was responding,” he said. “I honestly didn’t see him move at all.”
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