Man jumps to his death off of Disneyland's parking structure over Thanksgiving

The 6-story Mickey & Friends parking structure is located on Disneyland Drive between Ball Road and Magic Way
A 40-year-old Anaheim man jumped to his death at the Happiest Place on Earth from atop the parking structure at the Disneyland Resort on early Friday morning.

The view atop Mickey & Friends parking structure looking south onto the
Disneyland Hotel and Downtown Disney
The Orange County Coroner's Office said the incident occurred around 2 a.m. on Friday, Thanksgiving weekend, at the Mickey & Friend parking structure on Disneyland Drive near the southwest intersection with West Ball Road.

There are currently no indications about why the man jumped to his death, but police are investigating the incident as a possible suicide and have identified the man as a local resident of Anaheim, named Brandon Quigley.

Paramedics were called and rushed the man to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, where the man was pronounced dead at 3:08 a.m. Friday.

The Mickey & Friends Parking Structure has been a favorite spot in recent years for people to commit suicide at the Happiest Place on Earth; however, Disneyland officials have not lifted a finger in all that time to safeguard guests against such incidents.


Disneyland's previous "go-to" spot for suicides, the Disneyland Hotel, is largely being supplanted by the parking structure due to greater accessibility of the parking structure to the public and a move in 2010-2012 to renovate the hotel which removed most of the balconies from the hotel towers, although there remains a few suites with high-level balconies on the top floor and along the west and east edges of the Frontier Tower.

The view off the northern stairwell of the Paradise Pier Hotel during a smoking
fire from Disney's PCH Grill last January
The Disneyland Hotel has recorded three suicides from jumpers in 1994, 1996, and 2008. A fourth jumper in 1998, a 23-year-old Walt Disney Company employee, jumped from the 14th floor of one of the Disneyland Hotel towers, but survived the fall.

The potential for jumpers also remains in the Paradise Pier Hotel and the Grand California Hotel, although we have not found any record of deaths from jumpers from those hotels.

The high stairwells with adjoining access ways into the hotel's hallways on the north and south sides of the Paradise Pier Hotel is particularly accessible to jumpers as there is only a short metal retaining grill that prevents someone from falling over or jumper from the building. That can easily stepped over for any potential jumper.


With this latest death, the parking structure has now caught up with the Disneyland Hotel in the number of jumping deaths with three.

The Frontier Tower is the only remaining tower of the Disneyland Hotel with any balconies
On April 2, 2012, a 23-year-old Santa Ana man was found dead near the northwest corner of the Mickey & Friends parking structure, where he had apparently jumped to his death. The incident was investigated as a suicide; however, no evidence was found to indicate the incident was a suicide.

Two years earlier on October 17, 2010,  a 61-year-old man from Hickman, California, jumped to his death from the top floor of the parking structure. He left behind a note citing "personal reasons" for his suicide.


Now with a third fatal jumping incident at the parking structure, it appears the responsible thing for Disney to do would be to safeguard its guests from future incidents of jumping off the structure.


Sources:

Comments

Post a Comment