The Region : Mental Patient Jumps 22 Stories to Death

A woman who walked away from a mental health facility in East Los Angeles April 3 leaped to her death from the 22nd story of a building at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood. Los Angeles Police Detective Dennis Kilcoyne said Brooke LaBadie, 35, had threatened to jump from the same building last January, holding up traffic at the corner for six hours before she was dragged to safety by a police officer. He said the woman was confined to the mental health facility after the first incident but disappeared and was not seen again until her death. Kilcoyne said management of the building had removed a steel ladder from the rooftop to the parapet catwalk after the last incident but that LaBadie got to the catwalk by climbing across an air conditioner.