A numbers cruncher at a Manhattan ad firm suddenly decided that the office mannequins were out for his blood — so he jumped to his death from a fourth-floor window to escape their wrath, sources told The Post on Thursday.
David Caquais“They’re after me! They’re after me!” David Caquais, 43, shouted while frantically pointing at the blank-faced dummies in the Garment District offices of Catch NY around 9 p.m. Jan. 2.
“This guy’s running around . . . he’s kicking the window panes. He’s using his fists, his elbows, trying to get one window pane open,” said a worker at Avalon hotel across the street.
“He’s yelling all kinds of things . . . He goes to a fourth window, and that’s when he gets enough room to get his body through . . . and he jumps,” the witness said.
“The last thing in my mind was that he was going to take a swan dive,” he added.
The mannequins — both male and female — were set up at the shop as part of a retail project, an owner of the firm said.
It’s not the first time Caquais, who had worked for the firm “at least a couple years,” had acted strangely, the owner said.
“Whatever problems he’s had in the past kind of have come back to haunt him,” the owner said.
He had a history of trouble with drugs, the owner said. But he added, “I mean, he was a sweet, lovable guy . . . just sort of an office favorite.”
Caquais, a father of three, lived on Staten Island with his wife, Rosa.
A co-worker told cops he believed Caquais was high on PCP — though a neighbor said, “I’ve never heard of him taking drugs . . . He’s a very nice guy.”
Catch NY calls itself a branding and strategy “think tank with a super-powered herd of nerds,” according to the company website.
Its employees include “a collection of hipster artistes, tech gurus, a barrage of bean counters, and phone-attached-to-the-face client-huggers,” it notes.
Caquais’ funeral was Thursday at Our Lady Help of Christians R.C. Church.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain and Natalie O’Neill
