Would-Be Rescuer Hurt in Woman’s Fatal Fall

A woman apparently intent on killing herself jumped Sunday afternoon from the top of the Sherman Oaks Galleria, falling six stories onto a 26-year-old security guard, breaking his neck and possibly leaving him paralyzed.

In what officials called an act of heroism, guard Conrad Buchanan tried to catch the woman as she dropped. A father of two, he was listed late Sunday in serious but stable condition at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

Relatives said he may be left paralyzed from the neck down.

“That’s just the way he is,” said his mother, Norma Buchanan. “He’s always helping people. He assumed he could help her by catching her.”

“I think his effort speaks for itself,” Los Angeles Police Sgt. John Goode said. “It’s just a terrible tragedy.”

The unidentified woman, who suffered a broken back, died Sunday evening at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

The incident began about 3:15 p.m., police said. The woman made her way to the top of the mall parking lot and announced to a group of pedestrians below--along Ventura Boulevard near Sepulveda Boulevard--that she was going to jump.

“She advised them to move or she would fall on them,” Goode said. “All the pedestrians moved, with the exception of an on-duty uniformed security guard.”

Witnesses told police that Buchanan shouted up to her several times, “Don’t jump! Don’t jump!”

As the crowd parted, the woman jumped off the building--and onto Buchanan, who was trying to catch her.

The two were rushed to the hospital, where the woman died shortly before 7 p.m.

From a hospital waiting room, Buchanan’s relatives said Sunday night that he was conscious but unable to respond to them.

They said his wife, LaTonya, had become worried when she came to the mall from their Los Angeles home to pick him up--but he wasn’t at their usual pickup spot and did not respond to the telephonic pages she sent. Soon afterward, while she was still at the mall, officials told her he was en route to the hospital.

“She was right there, but she didn’t know it had happened,” Norma Buchanan said of her daughter-in-law.