Police had treated the situation as if Mariano might jump, dispatching a fire truck and rescue crew to City Hall at about 5:50 p.m. About the same time, union leader John Dougherty, Mariano’s friend and political patron, headed into the building.

Street and Johnson talked Mariano down from the deck shortly after 6 p.m., Police Inspector William Colarulo said.

This article does a fairly decent job of pointing out something obvious to anybody who has ever been on Philadelphia City Hall’s observation deck - there is no way in hell for a person who isn’t carrying a weapon or a bottle of Drano to kill themselves up there. Had you seen this event play out on television, or heard it on news radio, you would imagine that the only thing standing between Mr. Mariano and the pavement was some brief glimmer of reason or the grace of god.

That simply wasn’t the case. The observation deck, like nearly every observation deck on the face of our fair planet, is a large zoo enclosure in the sky, where gawking humans are on the inside with only rising air pollution to take note of them. Once you are in, there is no way out save the elevator.

While I’ve never thought much of Mariano and it’s a damn good bet that the feds have him dead to rights, I still imagine him to be smart enough to know that the observation deck is no place for suicide. Anybody with even a spec of reason within the local broadcast media surely knew the same, though they certainly didn’t report it at the time. Something else was up. Whether it was a very pathetic cry for help or a thoughtful gaze at the gates of a self inflicted hell we’ll probably never know, unless, god forbid, he is featured in a mini-series.

Anyway, I hope Mr. Mariano finds peace. Clearly, today was not his best. Only time and a trial will tell us if it was his worst.