At about 4:30 p.m. word spread of an injured student at the freshman dorm.
Jared Bressman, who lives in Stuart Hall, said he heard students screaming and a loud noise when the student fell.
“All I heard was: ‘He jumped from the sixth floor. He jumped from the sixth floor and somehow he made it.’ What ran through my mind was — not again,” Bressman said.
The incident comes after Larry Cook, a freshman at the University of Dayton, died on April 2 after falling from a sixth-story window of the Stuart Hall Complex residence.
Cook’s death was ruled a suicide on April 9 by the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office.
But Cook’s family and their attorney, Christopher Chestnut, have strongly contested that finding and have suggested a cover-up by the university and Dayton police.
University of Dayton police declined to comment about the student who fell from Marycrest Hall on Saturday.
University officials’ only comment was a written statement saying that Dayton police and the school’s public safety officials are conducting a joint investigation.
“We ask for your prayers tonight for a first-year student who was critically injured following an apparent fall from a window in Marycrest residence hall at approximately 4:30 p.m. today,” the press release said.
“Campus ministers and counselors are at the hospital and Marycrest residence hall to offer support and prayers.”
Bressman and other students were saddened and in disbelief that another student had fallen from a window.
“It’s real sad,” said Tom Zervas, 20, a sophomore.
“If this is another suicide I feel sorry for him and I feel like as a community we need to come together a little better and start to help one another out. It’s just amazing to me that this would happen on this campus. I just feel terrible about it.”
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