Updated at the bottom with a witness description.

Commuters on the 105 West this morning called up KNX news radio to report — of all things — a dead body in the slow lane.

Although we don't have many details yet, a California Highway Patrol spokesman does confirm that “we have what appears to be an attempted suicide” near where the 405 and the 105 convene near LAX.

According to the CHP, the apparent suicide jumper stopped his or her car on a 405 South flyover ramp around 8:50 a.m. — then “possibly jumped” off the overpass as traffic whizzed by on the 105 below.

“The coroner has been contacted and requested to the scene,” says the CHP spokesman. Police have also arrived to investigate a “fatal accident,” according to KNX.

As of 10:15 a.m., the 405 off-ramp that leads to the 105 West was still closed.

The spot where the jumper apparently chose to take his or her life is a multilayered tangle of freeways, ramps and surface streets — one of the most stacked intersections in all of Los Angeles.


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Updates to come as we receive them. If you saw the accident, or know what happened this morning, please let us know.

Update, 11:20 a.m.: LA Weekly reader John K. Goodman sends us this description of what he saw at the scene.

There were a ton of cops at the very top of the 105E ramp surrounding an empty silver SUV. They were not looking at the SUV though, they were all looking over the side of the ramp at something down below.

After exiting I followed the surface streets back to the site and got a photo right after I saw the coroner wheeling a zipped-up body bag into the coroners van. Apparently, whoever it was jumped from the very apex of the top ramp and landed not on the ground, but on another ramp below. There is another car stopped with police on the lower ramps and I can only speculate that the unfortunate driver of that car may have had a Die Hard moment with a falling suicidal person impacting their car or being hit soon after impact.

Goodman also took a couple photos of the accident. “Ugh,” he says via email. “Definitely an L.A. way to go.”

[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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