Michael Schwartz /for New York Daily News
A man jumped to his death from the roof of a midtown hotel Thursday morning, crushing a Cadillac Escalade that was parked across the street as the driver sat in the SUV drinking coffee, police said.
The apparent suicide occurred at 8:55 a.m. at the posh Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Ave., near 55th St.
The man, identified only as a 40-year-old from Florida, jumped from the sun deck of the 22nd-floor fitness center, landing on the Cadillac Escalade on 55th St. across from the hotel.
The driver of the luxury SUV said he was inside the SUV having a cup of coffee as he waited for his passenger when he hard a “loud boom” that made him duck.
“When I looked up, I saw my whole passenger side was crushed in from above,” said the driver, Engel Nicasio, 37. “I thought it was a construction accident or debris from a building.”
He exited the vehicle and saw the real horror: the body.
“I was in shock,” he said. “I had never seen a body like that, it was horrible. I just stood there staring at it until someone pulled me away.”
Another witness described a horrific crash before he also saw the dead man.
“The body [was] all twisted on the sidewalk,” said Armando Aiellano, 50, an air-conditioning repair man who was on a coffee break.
It was not immediately clear if the suicide had been staying at the hotel, where rooms run from $1,000 to $4,000 per night.
The Peninsula Hotel is on Fifth Ave. at 55th St. in a tony section of Midtown
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