Tragedy at Avalon

On Saturday, March 29, a young man fell from a 12th-floor apartment on Ninth Avenue at 1:15 a.m. The victim, who had been visiting a friend at the Avalon building in Cortez Hill, died on impact. The building’s maintenance manager was returning from the Gaslamp Quarter when he discovered the body lying in front of the Cortez Hill Market, which is on the building’s ground floor. He called the police, which arrived on the scene and cordoned off the area. Their only comment was that it was a suicide.

Christopher Chinn, a resident of Avalon, said he was standing on his balcony when he heard a woman’s scream. “It was a blood-curdling scream. I could see the body from my balcony. It was terrible.” The cry came from the young man’s girlfriend. Police have not yet released a report on the identity of the man.