Posted on 08/02/2013 3:44:57 PM PDT by grundle
Every urbanite’s worst nightmare came true for one New Yorker this week: Jennifer Rosoff, leaning against the railing on the balcony of her Upper East Side apartment, suddenly fell 17 stories to her death after the railing gave way. This is obviously horrifying and tragic. Rosoff was a media executive with stints at The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan on her resume. It’s outrageous that the owners of her building were so remiss in their balcony inspection duties. But if you skimmed the beginning of the Associated Press’s account of Rosoff’s accidental death, you wouldn’t get much information about Rosoff’s promising career or about the structural inadequacies of her balcony. Here are the first two paragraphs of the AP’s article about Rosoff:
"A 35-year-old media executive on a first date plunged to her death Thursday after the railing on her 17th-floor New York City balcony gave way, police said."
"Jennifer Rosoff went outside for a cigarette around 12:50 a.m. when she either sat on the railing or leaned on it. Her date told her that she probably shouldn't do it, and then moments later, she apparently fell backward and landed on construction scaffolding at the first floor, authorities said. Police spoke to the man and no foul play was suspected."
Let’s break this down. According to the AP, the crucial facts you need to know about Rosoff right off the bat are that:
1. She was 35 and single.
2. She was a smoker.
3. She invited a man back to her apartment late at night on a first date.
4. The man warned her not to lean against the balcony, but she did it anyway.
The implication being that this smoking slut totally had it coming...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Smart to be careful. Many a visitor death from ‘getting just the right camera angle’. Seven Falls in Colorado Springs comes to mind, as a pretty little thing died there not too many years ago doing just that.
Or the woman who stopped on an over-the-road iceflow, SUV slid sideways, then down 400 feet.
Have you ever been up Trail Ridge Road?
when i was much younger and stationed at ft carson i took my mom on trail ridge road. i was so focused on the driving i didn’t know i scared the crap out of her.
All the non-smokers I know were once smokers and all of them admit they enjoy the 2nd hand smoke.
Now, people have been telling me I would die young and I am past 70 1/2. People have been telling me I would end up with crepe paper skin and now they are amazed to learn my age because I am told I don’t look it. I am perfectly willing to continue paying my own health care costs, since I have paid both sides of Medicare/SS forever, still pay because I am still vital enough to work and since I have only seen an MD for an injury in the past couple of years, take no medications and prior to the ER visit had seen a physician 3x in ten years to have a wart removed, I am obviously not a drain on our nation’s precious health resources. I am in fact, a net contributor in both taxes and health insurance premiums.
I am not alone nor am I some rare exception. I have watched non-smokers die of lung cancer and other terrible cancers.
So, SVTCobra03, I get that you detest all tobacco use. That is as much your right as it is my right and that of others to use tobacco. Figment spoke truth: non-smokers may leave the room if there are smokers present who are indulging.
Yes...last time I went up with my mom and kids Fall 2011. Very pretty and unseasonably warm even on top. Now that would have freaked me out as a kid and we did go up there when I was a child. I used to get in the back of my parent's Red Hornet and hide my head and cry. So I'm getting better. Mostly overlooks freak me out. I inch my way up to fence and I do quick looks over and take pics, but it's very serious business. :)
Not implausible. I nearly knocked a co-ed out of a 7th-story dorm window in my senior year of college. She was sitting inside the window, her but and legs lined up along the edge. If I had actually made body contact, I might have ended up in jail for manslaughter.
That wasn’t her date that lived two doors down - it was someone else, and he heard the incident, but did not see it.
So you DON'T believe smoking is hazardous to your health?
Seriously?
Toooo funny.
Whoah! Someone died on 7 Falls? I was there just this year!
Always think about this one from 2011:
Chain-reaction rescue killed three at Yosemite
FR link
Several people in a hiking group at Yosemite that included three who were swept away and presumed dead had climbed over a barricade and were in the water about 25 feet from the edge of a waterfall, standing, playing and taking photographs, witnesses told Yosemite rangers.
I’ve never been much of a ladies man. But in single days, I have been inside a number of dates apartments on a first or second date, but never had all these other things happen. It’s presumptuous that she must have been a slut to have a man in her apartment. How do people make these quantum leaps in reasoning????
That’s the conclusion hubby and I came to as well.
Not saying she deserved it, but a close examination of the railing should have prompted a quick exit back indoors for that sort of activity.
Gravity wins every single time.
WRONG
Those other smells don’t permeate someone else’s clothing either.
WRONG
There’s no comparison.
Wrong again.
Wow, you sure are batting a thousand in the wrong column.
And then there’s the fact that the only side of this we’re getting is the man’s.
What if he’s a psychopath who did it on purpose?
The story was going for human interest, but either definition 2A or 3 in the MR pertained in this case.
Yes, someone sure did.
Near the top as I recall, climbed over the handrail to take a picture of her girlfriends that were with her. Her back was to the river, she took one more step backwards on the wet, slippery rocks, slipped, and fell a long ways.
Really sad, just a young, innocent girl who made a foolish error in judgment.
Based on the story, my guess is the building owner is part of the ruling class, and the reporting is supplying required cover.
Did you drive Gold Camp Road? Very pretty. That’s where the ice flow incident took place.
There has been at least one in Garden of Gods too.
Or the guy who decided to go off-road up near Cripple Creek. An open vertical mineshaft took him and his truck down 5 or 600 feet. It took a long time to find him, as ‘the earth simply swallowed him up’.
Some things are usually left out of the brochures.
Sure, if it’s a private house and the owners don’t mind the putrid smell of stale cigarette smoke pervading and lowering the value of the property, that’s fine.
If it is a public facility or when where employees would be exposed to the smoke, not so much.
That’s why I think the reporter did a good job. She exposed possibly relevant facts, such as yes, this man wasn’t well known to her, but apparently her being out on the balcony at that hour was explained by her having a smoke. She also gave something of the man’s side of the story with his report that he had warned her away from the railing.
I’d expect a toxology report will reveal whether alcohol was impeding her judgment.
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