Posted on 05/01/2024 8:50:53 AM PDT by grundle
Over the last 30 years, 14 people, including three University of California, Santa Barbara, students, have fallen to their deaths from the same stretch of cliffs in Isla Vista, a neighborhood along the coast in Santa Barbara.
Jacob Parker, a 23-year-old UCSB alumnus who graduated last spring, became the 14th victim to fall off the cliffs' edge while he was attending an afternoon party April 20 at one of the many houses that back up onto the bluffs.
"He had so much potential. I was just looking forward to seeing what he would accomplish in life. This was just the beginning," Jake's mother, Deborah Parker, told Fox News Digital. "It's just tragic that it was taken away from him."
... the 6-foot-1 Jake climbed over a 42-inch tall metal wire fence onto a 33-inch wide concrete ledge, bordered by an 18-inch tall metal rail along the cliff's edge in an effort to make it to the gazebo. While trying to climb back over into the party, Jake lost his footing and fell about 50 feet to his death.
Deborah Parker and Jake's father, George Parker, have described their son's death as preventable — particularly after local lawmakers passed a safety plan in November requiring all new fences to be 6 feet tall following the death of 19-year-old UCSB student Benjamin "Benny" Schurmer on Labor Day last year.
"I'm heartbroken. I'm crushed," Jake's father, George Parker, told Fox News Digital. "I'm at the point where this is now my work. Not just getting enforcement, but I really want to push for criminal charges."
Jake's parents are pursuing criminal charges — including involuntary manslaughter — as well as a civil case related to their son's death in the hope there will not be a 15th victim.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
This is what society has become, unfortunately.
Ironically, other cultures and countries are still sane on these liability issues. If you fall in a hotel bathtub, that’s too bad. It’s on you.
How many is too many? When will CONgress act and ban cliffs?
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Advice to the young: Don’t climb fences protecting you from a 50 foot drop while drunk.
And even then this doesn’t look like a “new” fence and so doesn’t need to be taller. Likely he just would have climbed that one as well.
Agreed. There should not be grounds for a lawsuit when someone is intentionally on the wrong side of a safety fence.
It’s a wonder anyone can sell fences anymore in America. Bidenskyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy’s Miggy Invasion made fences irrelevant.
Darwin will not be denied.
Cleaning the gene pool.
It’s a very sad situation for his family, but there was a fence put up, and it’s purpose was quite obvious.
The ‘Serial Killer Cliffs’ didn’t kill that kid.
His deliberate defiance of the safety rules was his undoing.
If the community was extremely unkind, and unbothered with public opinion, they could talk even about sueing the deceased’s family for the money it cost to recover the body. Something I imagine already being done in countries like China, Russia or Cuba.
“...6-foot-1 Jake climbed over a 42-inch tall metal wire fence onto a 33-inch wide concrete ledge, bordered by an 18-inch tall metal rail along the cliff’s edge”
Common sense lacking in so many in that generation...
All the best parties were down on DP.
Time for sensible cliff control laws?
If he hadn’t had that six-pack, he would still be alive.
It doesn’t look like those houses will last much longer, either. Then the problem will solve itself.
[... the 6-foot-1 Jake climbed over a 42-inch tall metal wire fence onto a 33-inch wide concrete ledge, bordered by an 18-inch tall metal rail along the cliff’s edge in an effort to make it to the gazebo. While trying to climb back over into the party, Jake lost his footing and fell about 50 feet to his death.]
(party) - intoxicated? high?
I gotta tell you, when I saw the headline my first thought was “Why don’t the owners put fences up near the cliff?”
Then you kindly included a picture. The fences are already there. If some unfortunate fool wants to climb over them, there’s not much more you can do. Even a six-foot tall fence wouldn’t deter a determined college kid.
You can’t fix stupid, but stupid often fixes itself.
Every Spring Break we have at least one drunk college student falling off a multistory hotel balcony.
Nobody sues the hotels and condos for having balconies.....................
This is California. Nothing is ever anybody’s fault.
Surely you mean ‘commonsense’. 😂👍
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