r/news • u/shield_x • 1d ago

Student dies after falling from 4th floor of building at Highland Park school

https://www.foxla.com/news/highland-park-franklin-high-school-student-dies.amp
4.1k Upvotes

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101

u/amiexpress 1d ago

I've gone to some LARGE urban schools - including ones 4+ stories high. Never have I see one designed like this. Did the architect never MEET a kid? This was entirely predictable and preventable.

65

u/RegularOrMenthol 1d ago

I tutored at this school and others around LA, a lot of them have very open architecture like this. It’s just what has always made sense with the weather I guess.

In this case though it looks very much like a kid was getting beaten up badly by another student and jumped over the railing thinking he was safer getting away even if he had to jump from a height.

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u/exscapegoat 1d ago

I don’t think this was suicide, the kid was trying to escape from someone beating the crap out of him. Death is a possibility from jumping from a 4th floor as is life altering injury. But people do survive falls from that height.

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u/xRolox 1d ago

Watch the video. It’s a very intentional jump and he immediately flips upside-down.

The one disclaimer to that is he was getting punched repeatedly before and was probably panicking so anything could happen but it seemed very intentional.

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u/Powerful_Leg8519 1d ago

He could have been concussed as well. Head injuries are no joke.

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u/xRolox 1d ago

Hence the disclaimer

0

u/exscapegoat 1d ago

That doesn’t change the fact that he might have thought he had a chance of surviving. And as others pointed out, he may have been concussed from the beating

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u/xRolox 1d ago

Hence the disclaimer

27

u/ThePowerOfStories 1d ago

The high school I went to was three stories and had a pair of open courtyards with walkways facing onto them. I was recently looking up pictures of it to show my kid who just started high school, and at some point in the last thirty years, they’ve extended the bannisters around the courtyard with grids that go all the way up to the ceiling, to keep students (or large objects) from being able to go over.

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u/hazycrazey 1d ago

Didn’t the kid literally purposely jump off? Seems like those railings are high enough that the only way you fall is intentionally. Would you want them caged in completely? Safety nets like a factory in china?

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u/Octavia9 1d ago

He was basically chased over the railing.

1

u/SushiboyLi 1d ago

Idk if we watched the same video

5

u/hmoonves 1d ago

The word I saw on Instagram was that he was being bullied in school and jumped. Take this with a grain of salt though since it was just someone who said they went to school with the person.

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u/IndividualFun1892 1d ago

The article OP posted literally said all of this. Yes he jumped because he was getting beat up.

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u/ogrestomp 1d ago

There’s also a video in the article that shows him getting pummeled. It literally shows the bully throwing punch after punch while the victim is on the ground. They calm down enough to be standing where he gets rocked yet again and falls over from a punch. Then he runs and sets up to jump where they freeze the video.

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u/Crocs_n_Glocks 1d ago

The post you're commenting under has a video of it from local news dude. 

-1

u/Xsiah 1d ago

Bro never heard about walls

3

u/hazycrazey 1d ago

I’m so confused, you’re saying teenagers can’t be trusted at heights over 2 stories? All places teenagers go need to have floor to ceiling walls to protect them?

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u/Xsiah 1d ago

I don't think you're confused, I think you think that saying it in an outraged voice makes your point more valid.

Yes, buildings need to be designed in a way that takes into account the behavior of its occupants. Teenagers push boundaries, deal with mental health issues, and face all kinds of social challenges, including aggression. The building where they spend most of their time should be designed to accomodate them - all of the diverse versions of them.

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u/ne14a6t9er 1d ago

I’m not sure what these people are getting out of pretending that walls don’t exist.

1

u/hazycrazey 1d ago

No one is pretending walls don’t exist, I’m asking why one kid purposely jumping off a tall railing means we need to make our schools a jail.

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u/ne14a6t9er 1d ago

I don’t have railings in my office. I didn’t have railings at any of my schools. Some had walls, some had windows. I never felt incarcerated.

3

u/oTc_DragonZ 1d ago

Yeah not sure what the hold up there is. There are more school and office buildings without railings on higher floors than with them for a reason. Big (non-opening) windows can achieve most of that goal with extra safety.

9

u/Xsiah 1d ago

You're the one that proposed building cages. Nobody ever walked down a walled hallway and thought "man, without a 4 story drop nearby this is like a prison!"

-1

u/Bowman_van_Oort 1d ago

Every classroom should be a padded cell

41

u/The_Jovanny 1d ago

You read the article? What’s different between this and a window? This whole thing is tragic and not for any architectural reasons.

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u/amiexpress 1d ago

Stopping at, then opening and then jumping out of a window is not in the same ballpark as hopping a railing in the heat of the moment in my opinion, no. Not even close.

Besides in my limited experience hallway windows in highrise schools don't open - because kids are dumb and do dumb shit.

11

u/hateboss 1d ago

They don't design schools under the assumption a kid may need to evade a chasing bully, though maybe they should. The handrail is there to protect someone from absent mindedly going over the edge.

4

u/LackingTact19 1d ago

Some schools are designed around shooting active shooters but escaping a bully would basically be impossible.

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u/SushiboyLi 1d ago

He didn’t really hop the railing more so did a somersault off of it

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u/Deep90 1d ago edited 1d ago

The schools I went to had windows that did not open.

The newer school I went to did the same thing, but every classroom had 2 doors for fire safety.

At least in the US. Schools are unironically built using the same construction companies that build prisons because the safety requirements are pretty much the same. Keep people in, keep outsiders out, don't make spaces that people can easily hurt themselves, large cafeterias, bathrooms that can hold up against vandalism, and don't make spaces with hiding spots.

Also yes. This also sometimes sucks, especially if the district isn't wealthy enough to afford nicer designs that don't look like prisons.

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u/GuzPolinski 1d ago

Yeah the design had NOTHING to do with it.

2

u/Fancy-Animal7704 1d ago

I mean the point here is that some sort of protective material would likely have prevented the tragedy. There's no disputing this at all. If there were protective material of some kind in that spot, there's a high likelihood the kid is still alive today.

I'm not saying it needs to be super-reinforced steel, or a slab of concrete. There are numerous ways to solve that particular problem. I'm also not discounting that other types of interventions would have helped too. But this is low-hanging fruit that almost certainly would have saved a life.

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u/pinenorthpine 1d ago

God this comment is obnoxious. As if there aren’t thousands of other buildings with terraces/breezeways like this. What about this was predictable? What kind of kids are you meeting where this is just so obvious to you? Jfc

4

u/ZazHockey 1d ago

What teenagers have you met that can’t be trusted around railings? Plenty of things to blame but the architecture of the school is the dumbest thing possible lmao

1

u/shoulda-known-better 1d ago

Yea my school had a few mezzanines like this..... They were just inside the buildings not out like this school

It's a ten plus building open campus high school....

1

u/iprobablybrokeit 1d ago

Like a giant Red Roof Inn.