After parking garage suicides, City Council to discuss deterrents, safety measures
Within seven months, five people have died after jumping to their deaths from the top of a parking garage.
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Boston city councilors are looking to meet with operators of local parking garages to consider what can be done to prevent people from jumping from the high-rise structures to their deaths.
The conversation around potential deterrents and security measures comes after the deaths of five people in three separate incidents at the Renaissance Park Garage at Northeastern University within a seven-month span. Two of those cases included the apparent double murder-suicide of a West Roxbury mother and her two children on Christmas Day, and a 22-year-old college student who died after he was allegedly urged to kill himself by his girlfriend, prosecutors say.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Councilor Ed Flynn, who filed the order for a hearing with council President Kim Janey, also pointed to when Boston police stopped a man from jumping from a six-story garage in Brighton earlier this month.
“While most tall buildings and bridges have barriers or fencing to prevent people who are distressed from jumping, parking garages are often accessible to the public with minimum security or barriers, making it harder to prevent people with distress or with mental health issues from jumping,” Flynn, reading from the filing, told the council.
Measures lawmakers could potentially consider should go beyond fences, too, Flynn said. He listed cameras, landscaping barriers, suicide prevention and help signage, and garage staff training as other possibilities, also adding the council must have a broader conversation about access to mental health services in the city.
Several of those tools have already been put in place at Northeastern’s Renaissance Park Garage since the death of Erin Pascal, 40, and her two young children last month, school officials have said. The garage is now staffed 24 hours per day, access to the top of the facility has been indefinitely blocked, and signage directing people to emotional support services has been installed.
The university also plans to make “structural modifications” to the nine-story garage and install additional surveillance cameras.
The council order was sent to the Committee on City and Neighborhood Services for review.
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