A man who jumped out of a ninth-floor window in New York was alive on Monday after he landed in a giant heap of trash uncollected since the city's huge snowstorm a week ago, according to Reuters. Vangelis Kapatos, 26, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition after jumping from his apartment in midtown Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, authorities said. Sanitation workers have not collected trash since the Dec. 26 storm dumped more than a foot and a half (45 cm) of snow on the city. Mounds of garbage several feet high line many sidewalks. "Everybody is complaining that the trash hasn't been picked up," Kapatos' aunt said on Monday. "But me, I'm thankful that it was never picked up." Police said the trash bags below broke Kapatos' fall and that he left no suicide note before jumping. The Department of Sanitation, which was only resuming garbage collection on Monday, estimates 77,000 tons of trash had been left uncollected since the storm. Katharina Capatos, who spells her surname differently from her nephew, told Reuters he was severely depressed and had spent a month in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital before being released last week. He also was worried about the possibility of being evicted from his $572-a-month rent-stabilized apartment, she said. Kapatos' eviction hearing was scheduled to proceed on Tuesday, according to the New York City Housing Court.
