Man dies after jumping from Long Beach apartment building

A man was pronounced dead on the morning of Sept. 8 after he jumped from a window of an apartment building at 215 E. Broadway, Long Beach police told the Herald.

Lt. Eric Cregeen, a spokesman for the Police Department, said that officers on a routine patrol were flagged down by construction workers at the building. “The workers stated to the officers that there was a male who was about to jump out of a fifth-floor window,” Cregeen said. “By the time the officers entered the building, the man had already jumped.”

According to Cregeen and others with knowledge of the incident, the 59-year-old victim, whom family members identified as Rosario DiBenedetto, jumped from the fifth floor of the seven-story Tudor Towers at about 10:18 a.m., and landed on a lower roof above the building’s entrance. Long Beach police and firefighters responded to the scene.

Adritik Binaj, the superintendent of the apartment building across the street, was on his terrace when he looked up and saw the man halfway out the window. “I was screaming, ‘Hey, what are you doing, man?’” he recounted.

Binaj called the police, and said he was on the phone with the 911 operator for five or 10 minutes as DiBenedetto yelled that he was going to kill himself and prepared to jump. “I saw him getting completely out and holding himself with two arms out of the window, and his whole body was [hanging] down,” Binaj said.

DiBenedetto let go of the window with one hand and held on with the other for about 10 more seconds, Binaj said. Then he let go and fell, landing head first, Binaj added. “There was a loud noise, like boom, when he landed,” he said.

Family members told the Herald that DiBenedetto was struggling with depression and had a history of drug addiction. They added that he was living alone, and had been hospitalized in March after he told someone at Tudor Towers that he was going to kill himself.

A cousin, Stefano DiBenedetto, said he looked up to Rosario, an avid soccer player — born in Sicily and raised in Baldwin — who taught him to play the sport. Stefano, who works in the music industry, said he was on his way to Atlanta for a concert to benefit addiction awareness last Thursday when he heard the tragic news.

“It was just so absurd and non-coincidental that that was what I was on my way to do,” Stefano said. “It was really challenging and painful, but we did this benefit concert and I had the artist that I’m managing dedicate a song to him, and we raised a bunch of money in his name.”

September is National Recovery Month, and Sept. 10 was Suicide Prevention Day.

“I think that there are a lot of people struggling with both of these issues that don’t really know what to do,” Stefano said. “… It breaks my heart that I couldn’t help him.”

Another person close to DiBenedetto, who declined to be identified, said that his mother died in January, which contributed significantly to his depression, making him a “vulnerable and fragile” person. DiBenedetto had also been served with an order of protection to stay away from his father that morning, she said.

“We love him, and we’re all very grieved and saddened at the loss of his life in this way, and it was just too soon,” the woman said. “This was not his time, and this is not at all the way that he or anyone should have their life come to an end.”

Anthony Esposito, who lives next to Tudor Towers, told the Herald at the scene that he heard a man yelling that morning, but by the time he came out of his home, the man had jumped. “That’s the bus stop for the kids to go to school, and you just think if this happened during school bus hours or something, there’s always a ton of kids in front of it,” Esposito said. “It’s just sad that some guy was left alone like that, and that’s it, he died. That’s how fragile life is.”