A 22-year-old senior died Sunday evening after falling from a tower known to attract thrill-seeking students at the university’s Bronx campus.
[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]
It was forbidden. But the group of friends sneaked into Fordham University’s most recognizable building in the dead of night anyway early Sunday.
They clambered up the steep staircase of the granite bell tower that overlooks Fordham’s Rose Hill campus to take in the view of the Bronx under moonlight, sending a Snapchat video from the top.
Then something went horribly wrong.
One of the students, a 22-year-old senior, fell through an opening in a landing, the police said, and plummeted down the inside of the clock and bell tower just a month before her graduation.
The woman, Sydney Monfries, was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital, where she died Sunday evening, according to the university. The police had found her unconscious inside the tower at about 3 a.m., with trauma to her head and body. The circumstances and the height of the fall were not clear.
The university sent multiple emails to students on Sunday, updating them about Ms. Monfries’s fall from the tower in Keating Hall at the heart of campus and the young woman’scondition.
“There are no words sufficient to describe the loss of someone so young and full of promise —and mere weeks from graduation,” the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, the president of the Jesuit university, said in an email to students.
The tower is off limits, but that has not stopped curious students eager to get a glimpse of the view.
“It’s like a senior thing to go on the most popular building on campus,” said Priscilla Morales, a psychology student at the university.
