*A sophomore at Penn State was found dead in a landfill last week after she allegedly took a deadly plunge down a trash chute.
Justine Gross, 19, was reported missing on Nov. 11, and her lifeless body was found at the recycling and refuse station the following morning.
Here’s more from Black Enterprise:
A man believed to be a fellow student told both authorities and Gross’ mother Francoise Gross that he met with her on the seventh floor of their apartment building earlier in the evening. The man says he gave Justine “a smoke,” to which she had some kind of negative reaction. He offered to take her back to her 10th floor apartment. Instead, she ran to the trash chute room on the 11th floor and dived down to the dumpster.
Per the report, the last message she sent to one of her friends read, “Something just happened.”
State College police said in a statement Friday that Justine fell “inside an 11th floor solid waste disposal chute” in an apartment building and “into a waste receptacle on the ground floor,” police said. She plunged nearly a dozen floors.
“Video evidence suggests she was alone in the 11th-floor hallway and in the waste disposal room when she fell,” police said.
The waste receptacle was emptied by a Borough of State College refuse truck, according to the report. Her body was discovered the following day after the garage was dumped at an area landfill.
Police in State College, Pa. are investigating Gross’ death as an accident, according to the New York Post.
Police said that the incident “still appears to be accidental in nature.”
“They want me to believe she walked into that chute,” Francoise Gross told NJ.com. “I believe someone was chasing her, and she went into the chute, thinking it was a staircase.”
Francoise Gross is waiting for the coroner’s report, as she is not convinced her daughter’s death was an accident.
In a statement, Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers said it would be “inappropriate for the University to interfere with that investigation nor to address information that has not been publicly released.”
“We are heartbroken for the family and friends of Justine Gross and offer our condolences to all who knew and loved her,” Powers said in a statement. “Penn State staff in Student Affairs and beyond are offering assistance to family and acquaintances who are mourning this loss.”
The man who was last seen with Justine has reportedly hired an attorney.
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