A 22-year-old New York woman is in critical condition after plunging five stories from a rooftop at her apartment building while she was taking photos with friends, said police.
Reilly Hamilton fell from the roof of her building on E. 25th St. near Third Avenue in Manhattan at around 8 p.m. local time, said the New York City Police Department.
“I heard a massive crash and then I heard screaming from the top of the building,” said neighbor Dayo Adebanjo, 22.
She added: “I kind of thought that someone fell but I was like, ‘No way.’”
After the crash, there was a “period of silence” before several women came running down, Adebanjo told the Daily News.
“Reilly, oh my God, oh my God, Reilly, Reilly, is she dead? Is she dead?” she recalled the women saying.
When she peered out her window, Adebanjo saw Hamilton stricken on the ground in a small space between her building and the one next door, the Daily News reported.
“It was really, really obviously horrible to witness,“ she told the paper. “I heard her crying as her friends screamed that she was going to be okay.”
The woman “was conscious” as her friends moved her, Adebanjo recalled.
Hamilton was rushed to Bellevue Hospital with a fractured pelvis, broken right ankle, and broken right arm, it was reported. She was in critical but stable condition as of May 5.
Another neighbor told the New York Post that Hamilton “was taking pictures” when she fell.
“Apparently she hit the AC unit and landed in the trash area, which is like, horrendous,” the person told the outlet. “Horrible. I’m just completely shocked.”
The neighbor said Hamilton and her roommates liked to party and had access to the roof.
“They actually made a lot of noise up there. We were always telling them, ‘Please keep it down, keep it down.’ They threw a lot of parties,” the person told the newspaper.
Another resident said they were partying when she fell.
“The place is one nonstop party,” the man told the Post. “It’s a bunch of recent college grads who basically transplanted their sorority up here and kept the party going.”
He added: “One [party] had been going all weekend long—just loud music, loud voices, all day and all night. I’d hear it every time I walked out of my apartment.”
Hamilton, who is originally from West Virginia, is a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and graduated from the University of Kentucky last year.
“I went upstairs because I know these girls. It was just a bunch of girls in the room—all were crying—and a bunch of cops,” another neighbor told the Post. “They’ve lived here for seven months already. They moved in at like the end of the summer. It’s horrible.”
Several weeks ago, Fordham University senior Sydney Monfries, 22, dropped 40 feet to her death inside the Bronx campus’ Keating Hall tower.
