At midday on September 19, 1961, residents of the building at Ackerstraße 42 informed the border guards that they had heard suspicious sounding noises coming from the attic. The border guards discovered a young man on the roof of the building next door that stood right on the border. Ordered to halt, he swung himself over the edge of the roof and tried to get a foothold on the window below. But he missed the window cross and fell down three floors to the pavement. The man suffered several broken bones and was retrieved by a West Berlin ambulance.