INSIDE EDITION speaks to the woman who drew fire after it was reported she became upset that a man who attempted suicide survived a 400-foot drop by landing on and totaling her beloved Dodge Charger.
Is Maria McCormack the most insensitive woman in America? That's the question some are asking in the wake of a miraculous story of survival.
"I'm devastated. I have not slept since this happened," says McCormack.
It all began when a troubled young man jumped 39 stories from the penthouse balcony of a high-rise on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Incredibly, he survived the 400-foot fall...because he landed on McCormack's red Dodge Charger.
A photograph taken moments after the leap shows Thomas Magill in the back seat of the car, very much alive despite two broken legs.
The 22-year-old Magill had posted the words "I hate my life" on his Facebook page.
Magill's suicide attempt was shocking...but so was the New York Post headline: "Why My Car?"
That's right, Maria McCormack was quoted as saying: "I want to meet [Magill] and say, "Why? Why my car out of all the cars in the city? ' "
"Did you say, 'Why, why, why my car?' " INSIDE EDITION's Diane McInerney asks her.
"No I said, 'What a coincidence out of all the cars in the city it was a Charger that saved his life,' " says McCormack.
On the Today show, a clearly shocked Matt Lauer read McCormack's alleged statements about the jumper.
" 'I wonder how he feels now that he made it. Does he feel like an idiot?' says this person we're not even going to identify," Lauer said, reading from the New York Post.
"It's kind of heartless given that we're talking about a young man who obviously was very sad," observed Ann Curry.
But McCormack says she did not say that. "One of my quotes was, 'I feel like an idiot because I cannot believe how this car is getting all this attention when the attention should be on him,' " she told INSIDE EDITION.
It seems to be a case of life imitating art. In a classic Seinfeld episode, a jumper lands on George Costanza's car, and his reaction is very much in character: "My car!! My car!!" he yelled.
But this is no laughing matter, and nobody knows that better than McCormack, a mother of four.
The car is totaled, but Magill appears to be on the road to recovery.
McInerney asked McCormack if there was anything she wanted to say to Magill.
McCormack said, "Tom we really, really, really feel for you. Is there anything we can do?"
