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Man, Trying To Enter Apt. Through Window, Falls To Death
By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 9, 2010
Modified Jul 9, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 9, 2010
Modified Jul 9, 2010
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Harlem's Steven Wright and Lanecca Austin had gotten into a lover's quarrel late Wednesday night. It's unclear what they were fighting about, but around 5:30 Thursday morning, Wright tried to return to her 13th-floor apartment at West 112th Street, but the door was locked and she wouldn't answer. So he headed up to the roof.
Police say Wright tied his shoelaces and his belt to a pipe on the roof and tried to lower himself down to her top-floor window. The plan tragically failed, and Wright fell to his death onto a second-floor patio roof. "I heard a boom!" said Alexander Bridgett, 45, whose window overlooks the patio. "And then I looked out to see a dead body." Austin, Wright's girlfriend, tells the Daily News she was "asleep with the television on and the volume up high, and only found out Wright had fallen when cops knocked on her door." As one resident put it, "It's a bad thing that happened to a good dude."
Gotta be careful on roofs, y'all: Two years ago 19-year-old David Diaz fell to his death off a Harlem rooftop after a man he threw an egg at came up to confront him with a knife. And in Williamsburg, the vibe at multiple roof parties has been harshed by people falling down shafts.
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fall
harlem
roof
steven wright
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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