A Brooklyn Museum visitor passed away on Saturday, 6 October after sliding down a stairwell banister from the third floor and sustaining fatal injuries from the fall, per Hyperallergic.
Kirkland Dawson, a 34-year-old attorney based in New York, fell over the third-floor staircase railing after attempting to slide down, as stated in a police report first published in the New York Daily News.
The freak accident happened around 9.30 pm while the monthly “First Saturdays” program was going on. Dawson was immediately taken to the New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital to be treated, but he succumbed to his injuries the next day.
The family of the deceased told New York Daily News that they did not get any details of the accident nor received condolences from the museum. Kathy Dawson, the mother of the attorney, was upset that the museum staff did not give her a “call or any apologies.”
The deceased’s sister Taylor Dawson also lamented that the family only knew about what happened through “word of mouth” from the detective, who told them the victim “suffered brain damage” when he could not “stop his fall.”
Meanwhile, the Brooklyn museum wrote to Hyperallergic in an email saying they actually did “reach out” to the family to “share condolences,” and that they were “deeply saddened” by the tragic circumstances.
Dawson’s former roommate Ryan McBride was the last person who spoke to him before he fell. He claimed that when he reached the first floor, he saw a lot of security officers “running around everywhere” and got the information that his friend was injured. He then accompanied him to the hospital.
On Dawson’s character, both McBride and Dawson’s mother heaped praises, revealing that many who knew him would say he was great.
NYC lawyer dies in freak accident after trying to slide down third-floor banister inside Brooklyn Museum https://t.co/e599Hvcpkv
— Ginger Adams Otis (@GingerOtis) October 11, 2019
[via Hyperallergic, cover image via Felix Lipov / Shutterstock.com] http://www.designtaxi.com/news/406795/Brooklyn-Museum-Visitor-Dies-After-Losing-Balance-Toppled-Over-Railing/