MARIETTE LE ROUX, Bloemfontein | Tuesday
IT was suspected that a man who survived a fall of some 22 floors from a Bloemfontein building on Monday had been trying to commit suicide, police said on Tuesday.
”No foul play is suspected,” Free State police representative Captain Ernest Mayiki said.
Nosi Maxakato (29) fell on a car parked outside the CR Swart provincial government building around 7.45am. He landed on his buttocks, suffering a broken left leg, a cracked pelvis, and a collapsed lung.
”He is alive and kicking,” Mayiki said.
Maxakato apparently arrived at the building 15 minutes earlier, telling security staff he was visiting somebody on the eighth floor.
He signed the register and went up in the lift, shortly after which security personnel were alerted that someone had fallen from the building.
Before his fall, Maxakato was seen roaming around on various floors between the eight and 22nd, Mayiki said. He was last seen on the 22nd floor.
Mayiki said there was no evidence at this stage that Maxakato had been pushed out of the building, and it was impossible that he could have fallen out accidentally.
”We suspect he jumped from a toilet window,” he said.
Maxakato, an unemployed resident of Rocklands, outside Bloemfontein, still needed to make a statement to the police.
Should it transpire that he was indeed trying to kill himself, the police would recommend that he receive psychiatric help.
Chris du Preez, who works on the ground floor of the building, on Tuesday said he and his co-workers heard a big bang.
”We thought it was a gas bottle exploding. Shortly afterwards, someone came running in to tell my colleague (Johan van der Walt) that someone had fallen on his car.
”He was very shocked when he saw his car. He was shaking.”
According to Mayiki, the car was written off.
The Pelanomi hospital refused to divulge any information on Maxakato’s condition. – Sapa