NEW YORK -- New York police are trying to identify a man, clad in black, who plunged to his death from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building.

Police said the man, about 30 years old, had dashed across the crowded open-air observatory Friday morning and vaulted over a 10-foot-high fence on the north side of the building and fell 80 stories landing on a sixth-floor ledge, the New York Post reported Saturday.

A guard tried to grab him but it was too late," a police officer said.

The man did not speak to people on the observation before jumping and he apparently left no note, a police official said, who added that the incident was captured on the building's security cameras.

Ever since the building opened in 1931, the landmark Fifth Avenue building has been a target for people wanting to commit suicide -- at least 30 people have taken their own lives there.

Copyright 2004 by United Press International