The man who jumped to his death from a pedestrian bridge above a crowded area of the Long Beach shoreline was not intending to kill himself, according to a newly released autopsy from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Department.
Investigators ruled his death on Nov. 16 was an accident, saying he and a friend had been drinking on a pedestrian bridge that crosses Shoreline Drive, connecting the Convention Center plaza to Rainbow Harbor. They then began betting each other to make the treacherous jump from the bridge’s spiral staircase into the nearby harbor waters below, the report says.
Crowds of people, some waiting to get on boats for Saturday afternoon harbor tours, witnessed 60-year-old Daniel Tholl leap from the staircase and fall 40 to 50 feet onto a dock below.
He crashed forward into the water, and bystanders swiftly pulled him out. They began giving him first aid, but he died at the scene.
According to the autopsy report, Tholl’s friend told police that Tholl “had no suicidal ideations prior to the jump” and he “did not believe it was a suicide attempt given that they had been daring each other to jump in the water at the time of the incident. Before jumping, the decedent had emptied his pockets of his belongings (cell phone, wallet, etc.) so they would not get wet … .”