Argentina: Woman falls 23 floors – and survives

A young woman fell from the 23rd floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, and survived.

The woman, who has not been identified, landed in a seated position on a taxi below that cushioned her fall. The taxi driver said he noticed a police officer looking up and clearing traffic, and he therefore got out of his taxi a moment before the woman landed on it.

"I got out of the car a second before. If I had not got out, I would have been killed," said the driver, Miguel Cajal, as reported in BBC News. "I was only 10 meters from the impact. It made a terrible noise."

The heavy impact dented the car's roof and broke its windshield.

The young woman was rushed to Hospital Argerich and treated in intensive care for multiple injuries, including internal bleeding and broken hips and ribs, as reported in AP. The director of Argentina's Emergency Medical System, Alberto Crescenti, estimated the young woman fell nearly 100 meters (330 feet). Had she not landed in a seated position, she would have likely suffered more injuries if not been killed, according to Crescenti. 

Witnesses described the incident as an apparent suicide and said the woman threw herself from the Hotel Crown Plaza Panamericano in downtown Buenos Aires. Another taxi driver said he saw her climb over a railing at the building's edge and speak with someone before jumping off.

"I looked up and I saw a girl that was going over the railing while another person was talking to her," the driver, Juan Carlos Candame, said. "Then she walked to the edge, went back to talk to the other person, then she turned around and she jumped."

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