By WBNS 10-TV staff and Holly Zachariah, The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS – In an e-mail to employees and students Monday night, Ohio State University president Michael Drake announced a task force will look at parking garage safety.
This comes after two falls in four days from the same campus parking garage.
A 19-year-old student died Thursday after falling from the Ohio Union South Garage. Sunday, a 35-year-old woman fell from the same garage.
Drake said the task force will evaluate best practices and he wants them to provide recommendations to him within 60 days, according to a report on WBNS 10-TV.
The task force will be led by two people — Dr. Eileen Ryan, interim chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, and Dr. Javaune Adams-Gaston, senior vice president for Student Life.
Drake also said he has directed the school’s public safety officials to review facilities to improve safety.
Whether Kelly Denlinger, 35, accidentally fell or intentionally jumped remains unclear; officials say these investigations and official determination of exactly what happened takes time. Campus officials said Sunday night that Denlinger, of Centerville in southwestern Ohio, was taken to OSU’s Wexner Medical Center in critical condition. Monday, the hospital said she is not listed in their public directory so no additional information could be released, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Sunday’s incident, which happened about 3:30 p.m., was the third in 14 months and the second in less than a week at the Ohio Union South garage, which sits between North High Street and College Road. In February 2017, first-year, pre-med neurosciences major Madison Paul, a 19-year-old from Zanesville, died after a fall there. Officials later determined it was a suicide.
On Thursday, 19-year-old sophomore Daniel Birdsall died after falling or jumping there, authorities said.