A 19-year-old is dead Wednesday after she fell from a roof on the 1900 block of North 18th Street, police said.
Charlie Leone, deputy director of Campus Safety Services confirmed that the victim’s name is Ali Fausnaught, a student at West Chester University. Fausnaught, a freshman and Brownstown, Pa., native, had recently transferred from the University of South Carolina, Pam Sheridan of West Chester University said. Fausnaught’s Facebook page indicates that she attended Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa.
Shortly after 5 p.m., she fell off a third-floor roof into an alleyway between an adjacent building. Police arrived on the scene at 5:14 p.m. and the victim was transported to Temple Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 5: 51 p.m., Chief Inspector Scott Small said. It’s unclear how the teenager fell from the roof.
Roughly 30 to 40 people were on the roof at the time of the event, Small said, and police found a large number of beer cans on the premises. Eight witnesses were taken in for questioning, though no arrests or alcohol citations had been made at the time of press. Investigators said they believe the cause to be accidental.
Small described the concrete bottomed alleyway in which the young woman fell as a gruesome scene. In front of the house, the scene was more somber. People were crying in streets and on nearby stoops. Police said that access to the roof was allowed by a construction ladder which was placed on the second floor and led up to the third floor roof through an access hatch. Small said the roof was not furnished, and was not intended for use.
After the incident, police were warning students on nearby rooftops to descend, and that they were not allowed to be drinking on the roof. Still, as the sun set on 18th Street, students celebrating Temple’s annual Spring Fling could be seen on roofs, bottles and cans in hand.
Sean Carlin and John Moritz can be reached at news@temple-news.com.
[Updated: 4/18/2013 at 12:45 p.m.]
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