Teenager jumps from hospital's fifth-floor

JAKARTA (JP): An 18-year-old man, suspected to have been under the influence of drugs, jumped to his death from the fifth floor of the Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital at midnight on Tuesday, friends said on Wednesday.

The victim, Martin, from the Cililitan area, East Jakarta, ended his life after saying goodbye to his mother, Sarinah, who is being treated on the hospital's fifth floor for acute diabetes. He promised her he would return the next day.

Martin, a second-grader at a technical vocational high school in East Jakarta, was found lying supine on the roof of the ground floor bathroom -- a 15 meters drop from the fifth floor -- with a cracked skull and a foaming mouth.

A frequent visitor to him at hospital, Sano from Jl. Percetakan Negara, Central Jakarta, said at the scene Martin had told him he was suffering from stress.

"He wrote his feelings in English so I could not understand their meaning. Perhaps it was because of his father, who was very demanding."

Another visitor, Dani, said Martin had been sentenced to three months in Pondok Bambu prison for a drug related crime. He was released in August.

"He had been staggering drunk for the last three days. He said last Friday he had been forced by his friends to take ten ecstasy pills and drink liquor," Dani said.

"They were friends from prison," Dani said, adding that last Sunday Martin was brought by police to the hospital's emergency unit after being found lying unconscious in the National Monument (Monas) park in Central Jakarta.

"Later he confessed that he had taken an excessive amount of drugs at that time, but refused to be treated at the hospital. He didn't want his mother to find out," Dani said.

He said he and Martin had recently become friends after frequent chatting while visiting patients. "He had told me a lot of things about his life."

Dani said Martin's father Petrus, a security officer, left his mother and four brothers and sisters soon after she was treated at the hospital for the first time a few years ago.

"His sister, Yuli, once told me that Martin cut his hand after quarreling with their father. It's clear that Martin was a victim of a broken home," he said.

Martin had written notes on the walls of the hospital and on pieces of paper, saying he wanted to be released from life.

"An angel of death has called me," one such note said.

They also mentioned his hopeless love to a girl named Maureen. (01)