Naked Cult-y Couple in Splashy Tappan Zee Rush Hour Death Leap

[Ohio Joe]

Alfa Choice, a 29 year-old former high school biology teacher, drove with her 44 year-old boyfriend, Christopher Shears, to the middle of the Tappan Zee bridge yesterday morning. There, the couple parked and exited their Chevy Tahoe. Both were naked. They climbed on the roof of their car and then over the bridge's anti-suicide fence. Choice reportedly fell first, "either slipping or falling" (or possibly pushed); Shears followed her over. They were later pulled from the water nearly 200 feet below. Choice died. Shears is in critical condition. What was that all about?

http://gawker.com/5820772/naked-cult+y-couple-in-splashy-tappan-zee-rush-hour-death-leap

Wow... I lived most of my life just a few miles from the Tappan Zee and while I've heard of plenty that have jumped from the bridges crossing the Hudson... Never like this. Weird.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Anti-suicide fence fail. n/t

[Historic NY]

4. Lots of construction on that span those fences are well over 6ft...

with a inward curve

http://tarrytown.patch.com/articles/new-tappan-zee-fencing-aims-to-prevent-suicide-attempts

[Poll_Blind]

2. I'm not saying it describes this kind of madness perfectly, but there's a movie which I found...

...that describes a certain type of madness and how it spreads. The movie is called "Bug". It stars Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon. From the description:

An unhinged war veteran holes up with a lonely woman in a spooky Oklahoma motel room. The line between reality and delusion is blurred as they discover a bug infestation.

I have lived (so far) almost to 40 years and I have spent a good portion of that mingling and trying to understand humanity. While, mercifully, the type of relationship in the movie (and possibly in this tragedy) are uncommon, there are not so rare that I have not seen something like this, myself.

PB

[PoliticAverse]

5. Speaking of movies... "The Bridge"

Documentary on Golden Gate bridge suicides....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwl-Pa_QT0M

[mike_c]

7. while there are always lots of metaphors to explore in such things...

...Bug actually describes a real mental illness called "delusional parasitosis" whose suffers are convinced that they're being attacked, bitten, colonized, etc by tiny skin parasites (usually insects or other arthropods). On the internets it often goes under the names "Ekbom syndrome" and "Morgellon's disease." I've worked with a number of DP suffers over the years-- they are inconsolable.

[Poll_Blind]

8. I was thinking more about the co-dependent relationship between a...

...paranoid schizophrenic and a person without a center, a keel, like Ashley Judd portrays as a recovering drug addict, already made frail by the loss of her son. I've seen people hook up, and like little binary star systems, orbit a common delusion which can grow uncontrollable because of their union. I once knew of a...I dunno what his disorder was...but he hooked up with a diagnosed but unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic and they fed off each other, attracting 3 other people into their illusory world. They all wound up living together and became like a small cult without any clear leader, except the delusion, itself.

Two of the five, who I didn't know, I have no idea what happened to them. But the paranoid schizophrenic lost his mind entirely, his friend and a girl...a girl of unparalleled beauty and soft-spokenness...killed themselves in very painful ways on separate occasions either as their delusion fell apart or, based on what I know of their cult...as a self-sacrifice to it. None of them were over 28.

It was very, very bad.

A mind is a garden and we should never be unaware of what we're allowing to grow in it.

PB

[Historic NY]

3. In the same time we had another upriver at the Newburgh Beacon Bridge..

NEWBURGH-BEACON BRIDGE — A former Orange County banker leaped off the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge Tuesday morning, killing himself as bridge workers watched helplessly.

State police identified the man as William Myers, 65, of Middletown. Myers had been the CEO of two banks, one of which he founded during a career that had turned rocky in recent years.

State police Senior Investigator George Mohl said a passing motorist saw Myers park a 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt in a westbound lane, walk to the edge of the bridge and jump over the side. A Bridge Authority employee notified state police at 9:45 a.m.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110713/NEWS/107130345

We have had a few more further up river too...its becoming much more frequent. There have been bodies recovered here and there that most possible were jumpers too. A new trnd is to walk in front of a tractor trailer or a train.

*I just crossed the river twice today and the State Police are out in forced 5-6 cars on the bridge and patroling.

[nykym]

6. Hmmmmmmmmmm

both were driving Chevy's?????????????

[Name removed]

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