PARIS -- A young Canadian tourist was killed Sunday by a woman who jumped to her death from Notre Dame cathedral.
Police said Johanne Pelletier, 29, of Quebec, who was among hundreds of tourists swarming about the 12th-century cathedral, was killed instantly when she was struck by the plummeting bodyof an unidentified French woman.
The French woman, said to be around 25, jumped from the first tier of the church and crashed some 161 feet into the crowd, police said.
She died shortly after being admitted to a hospital. A man and a woman, both French, were injured.
Twenty three people have committed suicide from the cathedral since its construction in 1190.
But the last time a bystander was killed in a suicide attempt dates back to 1964, when a 22-year-old American, Veronica MacConnell, was crushed by a 50-year-old Frenchwoman.
The Eiffel Tower, another of the city's tourist attractions, but three times as high as Notre-Dame-de-Paris, has broken all French records for suicides.
A total of 366 people have plunged to their death from the 1,049-foot steel tower since it was built nearly a century ago.
