HE KNOCKED - & JUMPED
Suicidal stranger asks for balcony
A man barged into an 87-yearold woman’s Queens apartment Tuesday, rushed past her — and jumped to his death from her 12thfloor balcony.
Brian Swearing, 23, was frantic when he knocked on Geraldine Butler’s door in the Rochdale Village complex and asked, “Do you have a balcony?”
Butler, who did not know Swearing, could not stop the young man as he forced his way into her living room and darted to the metal railing of her terrace, where he jumped without hesitation.
The Valentine’s Day suicide left Butler still shaken a day later over “the fella” who’d been so determined to die.
“Naturally, I’m upset,” Butler said. “Because he was probably just looking for somewhere to do it.
Swearing man lived in another section of the building in the sprawling complex north of JFK Airport.
He had been on medication for social anxiety, a law-enforcement source said.
Butler on Wednesday recalled the chilling visit, speaking from her small apartment, which is decorated with photos of her grandchildren.
“Someone knocked on my door,” she said. “Me, stupid, I just opened the door.” A young man was there. “Do these apartments have balconies?” he demanded. “Do you have a balcony?”
“He said he wanted to see it,” Butler said. Then he gently, but firmly, pushed her aside, against the wall.
“I went to see where he was going and when I got to the terrace, he wasn’t there,” Butler recalled.
“I said, ‘Damn.’ What happened? Where did he go?”
Befuddled, Butler stood there a moment, puzzling.
“I was like, wow. I couldn’t understand where he was.”
“Angie,” a home health aide who worked down the hall, happened to knock next.
“I was telling her about this fella. And she said he knocked on her door, too.”
The two women went together onto the terrace and looked down.
“And there he was, on his stomach with his face down,” Butler said.
A crowd had begun to gather around the body.
“I was thinking, ‘He meant to do that,’ ” Butler said.
“Something must have gone wrong in his life.
“I feel very bad for him and his family. I really do.”
Swearing was declared dead at the scene.