A man driving over the bridge reported seeing the woman jump off, and after pulling over and getting out told police he saw her body in the Hudson River below.
FORT LEE -- A woman jumped to their death from the George Washington Bridge on Sunday, officials reported.
It was around 4:15 p.m., when a man driving over the bridge said he saw the unidentified woman jump from the bridge, near the New York Tower, said Joe Pentangelo, a Port Authority Police spokesman.
The man got out of his vehicle and looked over the railing of the bridge down to the Hudson River, some 200 feet below, where he saw the woman's body in the river, Pentangelo said.
Offiers contacted the New York Police Department, whose harbor patrol unit pulled the body from the water, Pentangelo said, adding that the woman was pronounced dead a short time later at Mt. Sinai St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan.
The bridge, completed in 1931, has pedestrian walkways in either direction, and despite the presence of surveillance cameras and Port Authority Police officers specially trained to spot and prevent would-be jumpers, more than a dozen people succeed in taking their own lives there each year.
Pentangelo said Sunday death, involving a woman in her 30's, was the seventh fatal leap from the bridge this year.
Suicide prevention fences built into or retrofitted on some bridges are costly and complex, and officials say they can effect the stability of a bridge, including how it absorbs the stress of high winds.
Like many of the country's older and busier bridges, the GWB has been without one up until now. However, as part of an ongoing overhaul of the bridge, the Port Authority now has plans to install a fence and suicide prevention system at a cost of at least $35 million.
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