Sunday, May 6, 1917
Miscommunication between police and hospital staff may be to blame for a Troy man’s suicide leap from the third floor of Troy Hospital this afternoon, The Record reports. John Budow ski of 533 Second Avenue is brought to the hospital around 10 a.m. “He was weak from loss of blood,” our reporter writes, “He made no statement and caused no trouble in the ward on the west side of the building on the third floor where he had been placed.” Investigators remain uncertain tonight of how Budow ski was injured in the first place. The patient himself tells Dr. Hugh V. Foley, who treated him at home, that “he had a quarrel with a fellow countryman over some whisky” and was slashed on the left breast during the fight. However, witnesses who were at home with him at the time claim that Budow ski slashed himself. Foley has Budow ski sent to the hospital while a policeman draws up a formal charge of attempted suicide. Neither Foley nor the police notify hospital staff that Budow ski had tried to kill himself, and no guard is assigned to the patient. Hospital officials thus see no reasons to take precautions against a suicide attempt, and the people treating Budow ski assume that he’d been injured in a fight. Around 2 p. m., while a nurse’s back is turned, “the man jumped from his bed and leaped out the open window.” Budow ski dies approximately two hours after his plunge.
By grim coincidence, just as Budow ski jumps, a man who was nearly the area’s third suicide this weekend is being treated downtown.
“While those about him were praying James O’Connell of Fort Edward slashed his wrist with a razor during services at the Beacon Light mission on River street,” our paper reports.
O’Connell, apparently “unbalanced,” terrifies the congregation by waving his razor wildly before using it on himself. Dr. A. J. Hambrook, the police surgeon, is called to the mission to treat him. After the Budow ski fiasco, no chances are being taken with O’Connell, who is kept at the First Precinct station overnight for observation.
“When O’Connell was placed in the cell he proceeded to tear away the bandages the doctor had put about his wrist,” our report resumes, “Nor did he stop at that. He pulled out two of the stitches which had been taken in the cut.”
O’Connell will be arraigned for attempted suicide in police court tomorrow. Mrs. Edward Pratt of Lansingbugh, whose husband had been toll collector on the Twelfth Street bridge when it was privately owned, drowned herself by jumping into the Little River off the Troy-Albany road yesterday.