Woman Falls Down Stairs, Out Window, Dies In Freak Accident In Manhattan

A New York woman has died following a bizarre accident in which she fell down a flight of stairs and out an open window, falling to her death on the pavement below, the New York Post is reporting.

The freak accident happened at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday evening in Upper Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood.

The Daily Mail reports that the unidentified 67-year-old woman was visiting her son when she was descending the staircase from the sixth floor. She somehow slipped on the stairs and, in a bizarre coincidence, fell through an open window on the fifth floor.

Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood is the northernmost neighborhood on the island. Naked Apartments describes the Upper East Side location as “almost suburban.” The New York Times claims that the neighborhood is trying to be “hip” like other Manhattan neighborhoods, but still hasn’t quite gotten there.

And the apartment buildings, like the one from which the woman fell out a window, five stories to her death, all bear similar features.

“Low-slung buildings, generally five or six stories and lacking doormen, also check population growth. People seeking to buy an apartment will likely end up with co-ops. The condominium wave of the last boom, and the current one, have largely passed by Inwood.”

This is not the first time this year someone in New York City has fallen to their death through a window. In March, a window washer, not properly using his safety equipment, fell five stories to his death while cleaning a window in Manhattan’s tony Tribeca neighborhood, according to the New York Daily News.

In 2013, a 35-year-old woman was taking a smoke break on the roof of a 17-story building in Manhattan when she sat on the railing; it gave way, and she fell over a hundred feet to her death, according to NBC News.

And perhaps one of the most famous, and heartbreaking, cases ever of someone falling to their death from a window in New York happened in 1991. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son, Conor, fell out of a window on the 49th floor of the condominium where the boy and his mother lived.

Initial reports in the media suggested that the woman who died in the Inwood accident had committed suicide, but police later confirmed that her death was simply a bizarre accident.

[Image courtesy of: Shutterstock/Barbol]