He was the second person to do so within two weeks. Darrell King was a 22-year-old city resident who climbed over the safety fence and jumped before security guards were able to restrain him or convince him to come down. King jumped from the 86th floor and hit a taxi parked on 33rd Street. His death came just 10 days after 23-year-old Jerry Larkin from Mount Holly, NJ had jumped from the building. Larkin had been apprehended at the building a week earlier as he tried to jump and was sent for observation at a hospital, but sadly returned to the building and jumped to this death.

A string of suicides in 1947 prompted the installation of a mesh fence along the observation deck and training for security guards to recognize someone planning to jump, but over the years people have still managed to climb past the fence and evade the security guards.