People on West 33rd Street got a shock when a severed leg fell on the sidewalk. The leg was from a man who had committed suicide by jumping out of a window on the Empire State Building 's 69th floor. The man hit a landing off the 30th floor, and his leg was severed, landing on West 33rd. A tourist from Virginia, Theresa Colon, said, "I cried and got sick to my stomach. I pray he knew who God was."

One man who works in the Empire State Building but was outside smoking told the Post, "Something flew right next to me, and I heard a large bang, like an M80 exploding." The leg landed outside the Cafe Europa, where people initially thought it was a Friday the 13th joke. A man from Staten Island "saw the leg hit the ground" and said one of the women in his tour bus "took a picture."

The Daily News reports the man was Moishe Kanovsky, who did "odds-and-ends work" for one of two law firms that shared a suite. One worker told the News, "He was interviewing a client. He just got up, opened the window and jumped," (a police source says that Kanovsky moved from the room with a client to another one and jumped). According to the Post, an employee at the other law firm said, "Everyone was passing out once they looked at it."