An Australian diplomat has died after falling from a New York City balcony while socialising with friends.<\/p>\n
Julian Simpson, 30, accidentally slipped from a seventh-floor ledge of his Manhattan building and fell to a landing on the second floor, New York police said.<\/p>\n
US media report he was playing a “trust game” with a friend before he fell.<\/p>\n
Mr Simpson was a junior diplomat representing Australia at the United Nations.<\/p>\n
Police were called to the scene about 01:00 local time on Wednesday (06:00 GMT). Mr Simpson was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n
The Australian envoy had been out with his wife and friends when they returned home to view the Empire State Building, which was lit up to celebrate\u00a0Australia’s same-sex marriage vote result, police said.<\/p>\n
An NYPD spokesperson would not confirm reports that he was playing a “trust” game that involved putting himself at risk and relying on one of his guests to catch him.<\/p>\n
“He’s described as somebody who liked to play games and had sat on the balcony railing and accidentally lost his balance,” Martin Brown said.<\/p>\n
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the accident a “shocking tragedy”.<\/p>\n
“Our hearts go out to his family but I cannot provide any more details at this stage,” he told the local Seven Network.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she was saddened by the death of Mr Simpson, who she had met recently in New York.<\/p>\n
“Julian was a diligent, professional and highly skilled diplomat, whose support I valued, during UN Leaders’ Week,” she said.<\/p>\n
Mr Simpson had been in the US for two years.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Australian diplomat has died after falling from a New York City balcony while socialising with friends. Julian Simpson, 30, accidentally slipped from a seventh-floor ledge of his Manhattan building and fell to a landing on the second floor, New York police said. US media report he was playing a “trust game” with a friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1671,8134,8787],"class_list":["post-374345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-australia","tag-building","tag-new-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}