The young man at 87-year-old Geraldine Butler’s door in southeastern Queens was frantic — demanding, “Do you have a balcony?”
Then before she could stop him, the young man pushed past her, crossed her living room, bolted over the metal railing of her 12th floor terrace and disappeared from sight.
He’d killed himself on Valentine’s Day, leaving Butler still shaken a day later over “the fella” who’d been so determined to die.
“Naturally, I’m upset,” Butler said of her brief, tragic visitor. “Because he was probably just looking for somewhere to do it.”
The young man was identified by police as Brian Swearing, 23, who lived in another section of her building in the sprawling Rochdale Village complex just north of Kennedy Airport.
Swearing had been suffering from social anxiety, and was on anti-anxiety medicine, a law enforcement source said.
Frail but feisty, Butler on Wednesday recalled the chilling visit, speaking from a small apartment crammed with photos of her grandchildren.
“Someone knocked on my door,” she said, adding, “Me, stupid, I just opened the door.”
A young man was standing there.
“Do these apartments have balconies?” he demanded. “Do you have a balcony?”
“He said he wanted to see it,” Butler said.
Then he gently, but firmly, pushed her aside, against the wall.
“I went to see where he was going and when I got to the terrace, he wasn’t there.
“I said, ‘Damn.’ What happened? Where did he go?”
Befuddled, Butler stood there a moment, puzzling.
“I was like, wow. I couldn’t understand where he was.”
“Angie,” a home health aide who worked down the hall, happened to knock next.
“I was telling her about this fella. And she said he knocked on her door, too.”
The two women went together onto the terrace.
“And there he was. On his stomach with his face down.”
A crowd had begun to gather around the body.
“I was thinking, ‘He meant to do that,” Butler told The Post on Wednesday, her voice filled with wonder.
“Something must have gone wrong in his life. I feel very bad for him and his family. I really do.”
Additional reporting by Alex Taylor and Laura Italiano
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