A mentally disabled man plunged to his death inside the Palisades Center mall in Rockland County Thursday morning.
The 54-year-old man was near the third-floor escalator just after 10 a.m. when he flipped over a waist-high rail and dropped 30 feet, according to CBS-2.
Horrified shoppers were shaken up after witnessing the fatal fall.
“I just saw the body on the floor,” a man who works at the nearby cellphone stand on the fourth floor told CBS. “It’s sad that it happened.”
The victim was on a regularly scheduled trip with his group home when the “terrible accident” happened.
“The safety of the individuals in our care is paramount, and we are doing everything we can to help determine what led to this terrible accident,” a spokesman for The New York Foundling, which runs the home the man received his care from, said in a statement.
Police are actively investigating the scene.
“At this point, we feel that there was a tragic accident,” Clarkstown Police Officer Pete Walker said. “Somehow he went over the edge of the barrier or the railing, and we’re not sure exactly how that happened.”