A gruesome suicide leap from the luxury hotel where the Los Angeles Angels are staying stunned and sickened players yesterday as they waited for the bus to Yankee Stadium.
“We just saw the body just laying there. It’s terrible,” said Angels star outfielder Torii Hunter, whose team left Le Parker Meridien on West 56th Street about an hour after the 8 a.m. death jump. “You’re not expecting that.”
Hunter’s teammates Ervin Santana, Jered Weaver and Matt Palmer were all on the street when Manhattan resident Brian Fiore, 39, took the plunge from the hotel’s 42nd-floor pool area.
Fiore, a former Salomon Brothers worker who was struggling just to eat, had purchased a day pass for the posh facilities.
Staff members became concerned when they spotted Fiore, a onetime member of the hotel’s Gravity Fitness Center, aimlessly wandering around the outdoor pool.
When they confronted him, he told them he was waiting to check in to the hotel and he was “getting some air,” the sources added.
A lifeguard urged Fiore to stay away from the building’s edge, but he ignored the man and hopped over the railing, the sources said. Fiore did not leave a suicide note.
Angels catcher Mike Napoli was shocked by the grim sight of a white sheet covering Fiore’s body.
“It was pretty sad, to tell you the truth,” he said. “Kind of disturbing.”
Truck driver Michael Norizsan, 45, of Long Island, was parked 20 yards from where Fiore’s body crashed.
“It was so loud I thought it was the facade of the building, but then I looked down and saw it wasn’t debris,” he said. “There was a face attached to it, and I couldn’t believe it.”
Hotel officials declined to comment.
An upstairs neighbor at Fiore’s West 69th Street building said he lost his job a few years ago and held a few temporary jobs since then.
“He didn’t have money or food, so we’d give him what we could,” said Louise Ulman. “It seemed he was spiraling down.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Laurie Kamens