Tourists’ stay ends in murder-suicide

Jen Lawson

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004 | 11:07 a.m.

A tourist committed suicide this morning by jumping off Hoover Dam after calling 911 and reporting that he had killed his girlfriend in a room at Treasure Island, Metro Police said.

The names and hometowns of the deceased had not been released by authorities this morning. Police said they are from another state.

A spokesman for the coroner's office said an autopsy was being performed on the woman this morning. Medical examiners were trying to confirm her identity through fingerprints.

Sgt. Chris Jones, spokesman for the police department, said the call came in to the dispatch center about 12:15 a.m. today. The caller directed police to go to his room at Treasure Island, where he told them they would find a body.

A woman, believed to be in her 20s, was dead in the room. Police this morning declined to say how she died.

About 1:15 a.m. guards who patrol the Hoover Dam noticed a car parked on the dam, then noticed a man outside the car, Colleen Dwyer, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, said. They became suspicious and called Metro.

"They said a man was there to commit suicide by jumping off the dam," Jones said.

Metro's SWAT team was called to negotiate with the man. After they began talking to him, police realized the same man called earlier reporting his girlfriend's death.

He tried to get police to shoot him -- known as suicide by cop.

"He made indications that he had a gun and he said he would force officers' hands if he had to," Jones said.

It's not clear what was said during the negotiations, but the man requested Newport cigarettes and authorities got him a pack, police said.

After several hours the man jumped off the face of the dam on the Arizona side, hitting a slope and falling about 750 feet to his death.

The dam was closed to traffic during the negotiations and for the investigation after the man's jump. It was reopened by 6:30 a.m.

About 30 people have committed suicide by leaping off the dam since it opened in 1935, Dwyer said.

The last suicide was in May 2003, when a New York woman on vacation leapt to her death.

She was touring the dam with Adventure Tours when she broke away from the group, climbed the fence and jumped. She fell 120 feet into the concrete spillway.

In 2000, after three people killed themselves between May and October, dam officials considered hiring a suicide specialist to recommend ways to prevent people from using the historic Southern Nevada landmark as a place to end their lives, but the plans were never carried out, Dwyer said.

There were concerns that anything added to the dam, such as suicide barricades, would not conform to National Historic Register standards. Barricades would have to allow the public as much access as they currently have to the dam's different levels and views.

Instead dam tour guides and police officers received training on suicide prevention. Since 2000 the tour guides and officers have prevented about eight suicides, Dwyer said.

Hoover Dam attracts about 4,500 visitors a day.