Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/655551
ByRobertJablonand Andrew Dalton TheAssociatedPress LOS ANGELES Authorities are investigating whether an electrician intention- ally leaped to his death from the 53rd floor of Los Angeles' tallest skyscraper onto an intersection hum- ming with a normal week- day's bustle, the coroner said Friday. Joseph Sabbatino, 36, of Palmdale plunged some 800 feet from the unfin- ished Wilshire Grand Cen- ter on Thursday. It was his second day on the job. Sabbatino's father, Vance Sabbatino, told KABC-TV that his son struggled with depression and had been prescribed medication. His death was reported as a possible suicide but no note has been found, said Ed Winter, Los Ange- les County's assistant chief coroner. Sabbatino's body landed either near or on the rear of a passing car but the driver wasn't injured. It took some time for peo- ple below to realize the hor- ror of what had happened, said Los Angeles Times photographer Mel Melcon, who was on assignment at the building. "No one thought it was a body," Melcon told his pa- per. "We heard no screams." Sabbatino had taken off his hard hat and had not been wearing a safety harness because it wasn't required for the bottom floors he'd been working on, said Lisa Gritzner, spokes- woman for Turner Con- struction. The 53rd level had a bar- ricade to prevent falls, and the company issued a state- ment that said the incident "was not work-related." LOS ANGELES Skyscraper plunge investigated as suicide By Andrew Dalton The Associated Press LOS ANGELES Long-dis- tance runners are water- obsessed by necessity, but Mina Guli is on another level. She's trying to run more than 1,000 miles through seven deserts on seven continents in seven weeks to raise awareness of worldwide water shortages. She has completed six of the runs, having jogged an average of 150 miles each through harsh conditions in Spain, Jordan, Antarc- tica, Australia, South Af- rica and Chile. Now, the Australian is in drought-stricken Cali- fornia to run her final leg through Death Valley and into Nevada. She hopes to finish Tuesday, which the United Nations has desig- nated World Water Day. If she does, she will have run the equivalent of 40 marathons. Guli said she was feel- ing tired but inspired as she spoke to The Associ- ated Press by phone in San- tiago, Chile, where she was boarding a flight to Los An- geles on Thursday. "I'm excited about the momentum we've created," the 45-year-old said. "Rest has been few and far be- tween. I really want to do this in seven weeks, so it's been a rush. A lot of time is spent flying, driving into deserts. They're not always on the doorsteps of big cit- ies." In Jordan, on the second leg of the trek, Guli said she almost made her point about water shortages too well. She planned to use lo- cal water supplies along the way but faced a taxing set of days when there was lit- tle of the precious liquid to be had. "The wells are dry," she said. "Jordan is having ma- jor water problems. Places where you expect to get wa- ter, you don't get water any- more. Even places where people assured me there would be water to find, there was none." From there Guli made the otherworldly transi- tion to snow-white Antarc- tica, whose meager precip- itation makes it the world's largest desert. "It is white from the sky to the ground," she said. "The only sound you can hear is your own heart- beat." Guli, who now lives in Beijing and runs Thirst, a nonprofit dedicated to wa- ter issues, said it was al- most frustrating to be atop all that ice. "You're standing and running on all this fresh water that is inaccessible to the rest of the planet," she said. From there came an- other drastic change, in temperature and scenery, to the red sands of central Australia's Simpson Desert. Guli's desire to run dur- ing the day and stay on lo- cal time so she can meet and talk to people about water has made things es- pecially complicated. "Jet lag has been a ma- jor issue each time we've had a big time-zone change: between Aus- tralia and South Africa, I found that extremely challenging," she said. "I felt like I was running with lead weights around my ankles." WATER SHORTAGES Runner's aim: 1,000 miles in 7 deserts in 7 weeks PHOTOSBYKELVINTRAUTMAN Australian long-distance runner Mina Guli, the founder and CEO of Thirst, participates in the 7Deserts Run4Water expedition in Atacamba, Chile, while attempting to run through seven deserts on seven continents in seven weeks to raise awareness of worldwide water shortages, and she is almost done with the more-than-thousand-mile run. Mina Guli runs in the 7Deserts Run4Water expedition in Antarctica. Knee replacement from the Coon Joint Replacement Institute DianeLivingston|Vintner WARNING: Life will be back in balance. 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