AC casinos hit by wave of suicides

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

ATLANTIC CITY -- A German tourist jumped to his death off a 10-story casino parking garage Wednesday in the third such suicide in Atlantic City in eight days.

The man, whose name was not immediately released, resisted the pleas of a security guard who tried to talk him down from the ledge of the Resorts Atlantic City garage. He plummeted about 100 feet.

On Aug. 17, a gambler who had lost $87,000 jumped to his death off a Trump Plaza roof. On Monday, a dealer at Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino committed suicide by leaping off the casino's parking garage.

It wasn't clear if the most recent victim had been gambling. He left no suicide note.

Some experts blame casino gambling for higher suicide rates.

In 1997, a University of California-San Diego sociology professor issued a report linking gambling to suicides.

Professor David Phillips examined death certificates in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Reno and found that suicide rates were up to four times higher than in comparably sized cities where gambling is not legal.

The suicide rate in Las Vegas rose 7.5 percent in 1997, but Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said the increase couldn't be tied directly to gambling.

"We very seldom see gambling directly attached to a suicide," Flud said at the time. "What we see pretty normally is the No. 1 reason for suicides here is failed relationships."

Dashed dreams, domestic disputes and the rootlessness of Nevadans all are listed as suicide factors in Las Vegas.

"They come here looking for opportunities, then maybe their jobs don't work out, and they don't have the support mechanism here. They've got no one to turn to, so their problems escalate," Flud said.

Las Vegas has seen its share of high profile casino suicides. In 1996 a woman jumped from a 26th-floor balcony in the Luxor hotel-casino and landed at the entrance to the buffet area. In the same year a Circus Circus employee on break leapt over the edge of a hotel tower and fell 27 floors to his death. But the pro-casino American Gaming Association responded with a 1998 study asserting that suicides in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and other gambling resorts "are about average compared to non-gaming areas."

Edward Looney, executive director of the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling, said problem gamblers sometimes see suicide as the only way out.

"There's two things that happen to a compulsive gambler in the desperation stage," he said. "One is illegal activity, or stealing to get money or writing bad checks. Once they go through that money and can't gamble anymore, suicide becomes an alternative."

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