Crime & Safety

Sheriff's Office Investigating Novato Man's Fall From Hospital Window

Investigators believe the young man who was taken to hospital on a psychiatric hold jumped to his death

Bay City News

The Marin County coroner's office is investigating the death of a Novato man who was found outside of Marin General Hospital, 55 feet below the fourth floor where he was being treated.

James Mikulski, 28, was taken to the hospital for treatment and on a psychiatric hold on Oct. 1 after he jumped from a hillside in the area of state Highway 37 in Novato, Assistant Marin County Coroner Lt. Keith Boyd said.

The area for those psychiatric hold patients is not located on the fourth floor, Boyd said. He was found on the ground outside the hospital and was taken inside to the emergency room for life-saving treatment but was pronounced dead at 11:05 p.m. on Oct. 2.

Coroner's office investigators are trying to determine when Mikulski disconnected his medical monitoring devices. It's believed Mikulski forced open a window on the fourth floor to get to a narrow landing, Boyd said. There were no witnesses to Mikulski's jump or fall, Boyd said.

The death comes just days after the body of a woman being treated at San Francisco General Hospital was found in a stairwell 17 days after she disappeared from her hospital room. No alarms went off when Lynne Spalding disappeared and the police are investigating whether she may have slipped away unnoticed. 

On Friday, San Francisco General announced it was implementing new security measures meant to prevent a similar accident from happening. The hospital's chief medical officer, staffers and sheriff's deputies who police the hospital will now have to  check fire escapes when they sound and conduct daily sweeps of all the building's stairwells, the SF Chronicle is reporting. 


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