That sometimes happens in Korea – there’s a lot of high-rise apartment buildings,

for example a kid throws a heavy stuff from his 15th floor apartment, someone who was walking by gets hit and dies

It’s a type of unusual freak death, and it sometimes goes on news and TV

Have you ever seen such a case on TV or newspaper in the US?

38 comments

  1. Yes, for example sometimes that will happen with icicles in the winter in some cities. I don’t see a lot of it in the media though.

  2. We’re a nation of 330,000,000 people.

    I can’t think of any times that it has happened but I feel pretty confident that it has at least once.

  3. Happens in Manhattan from time to time. People get hit with ice, or scaffolding etc in high wind. A co-worker of mine almost got hit by a jumper a few years back. He was walking back from lunch with his umbrella up and the guy that jumped leg hit his umbrella. 2 feet over and he would have also died.

  4. This is a trope for movies and TV set in New York City. Usually an air conditioning unit or a piano will fall on someone in the movie/show.

    As far as real life, apparently there are zero recorded cases of a death from an A/C unit in NYC. Supposedly someone has died from falling piano in 1931, but I can’t find an actual source confirming that.

  5. I am constantly dodging anvils from the sky and an occasional grand piano

  6. I’m sure those things have happened. We also have building codes like heavy duty windows to help prevent people from throwing things from 15th floor apartments.

  7. It happens but in NYC they made pretty strict laws to try and prevent it.

    People aren’t supposed to install their own air conditioners, if you put plants on windowsills your building can be fined and decorative stonework needs to be maintained.

    Also the put protective scaffolding around buildings that have work being done.

  8. I think some of the statues on the friezes on the exterior of the Supreme Court building have fallen and I think killed a lawyer once. They put a lot more regulations and protections for urban construction designed to reduce the likelihood of things getting accidentally blown off or dropped off buildings but accidents still happen.

  9. Injuries in winter from falling ice from skyscrapers weren’t unheard of when I lived in Chicago. Buildings would typically put caution signs on the sidewalks. When I still lived there, I once had a huge icicle come down about two feet away from me, but I wasn’t hit or anything.

  10. it’s why there’s scaffolding everywhere in new york.

    it’s *definitely* happened. i don’t know about tv’s and stuff, think it’s more geared for construction materials falling.

  11. It happens occasionally then the city puts a bunch of laws and regulations in place to delay the next time it happens.

    I think most larger buildings now have nets or are designed to not have things fall onto the sidewalk.

    I do get paranoid about those makeshift corridors you see while they’re doing construction.

  12. There aren’t any high rises near me. However maybe a little over a year ago some people were out on the beach while it was raining. One guy gets hit by lightning and his friend was close enough that it went through him and passed along to his friend. I believe one lived, while the other died. There happened to be an EMT in the parking lot who was looking at the waves before the rain started. He saw it happening and ran out there to try and help. From what I understand that was the only reason they both didn’t die.

    Edit: freaky, I found multiple articles from different years. And I’m fairly certain the one I was thinking of they were from Michigan. But here another one.

    One man died and another one was injured when they were struck by lightning on Satellite Beach, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday night.

    Lamar Rayfield, 35, of Philadelphia, was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition and later pronounced dead, spokesman Tod Goodyear said.

    The other man, he added, was also hospitalized and was in stable condition on Friday night.

    Although lifeguards were off duty at the time of the incident, lifeguard captain Ashley Nolan was driving home from work and performed CPR on one of the victims, Brevard County Fire Rescue spokesman Don Walker said.

    Rayfield suffered a cardiac arrest at the scene, Walker said.

  13. We have 350 million people here I am sure someone is idiotic enough to have died by that but I live in a state where headlines like this “Man kidnaps scientist to make his dog immortal” are common

  14. I’ve heard an urban legend about someone dying from getting hit with a penny thrown from the top of the empire state building. Pretty sure it’s just an urban legend though.

    Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if people in America have died because something fell off a tall building.

  16. It’s a trope from tv, but rarely happens.

    There is a bit of a myth that if you toss a penny off a tall building, usually the empire state building, it will crash someone’s skull if it hits them. The terminal velocity of a penny is pretty fast, but their mass is small enough that it wouldn’t hurt anyone.

  17. I’m pretty sure that’s why you see all that scaffolding in cities to cover sidewalks around these buildings. I’m sure it has happened but America is generally pretty good about safety measures.

  21. When I worked in Manhattan I got hit in the head by a chunk of ice falling off a building. Fortunately it didn’t come from that high up. I only ended up with a bump on my head.

  22. I was walking down the street once and a waterbottle landed in front of me and exploded. I don’t know exactly where it came from but the building I was in front of was like 20 stories tall. Not sure if it would have killed me but it was going really fast when it hit the ground so definitely could have injured someone.

  23. I remember once someone in New York was killed when something fell off a crane.

  25. It happens in Chicago every so often. Almost always it’s ice falling from a building. It’s not uncommon to see “caution falling ice” signs in the winter. Especially when it starts to thaw a bit.

  29. Window washer fell from a 10 or so story building near my office in SF some years back. Landed on a car, smashed the roof, but I think the driver was only minorly injured. Think the guy who fell survived.

  30. It happened in Montreal years ago. A couple was sitting on a restaurant terrace outside while waiting for their food when the woman was suddenly crushed to death by a falling piece of cement/concrete from the roof of the building (it was in a bad state), killing her instantly. I remember because it was on the news.

  31. Yes we have people dying from things being dropped carelessly onto them. I think in the US it’s more common that kids (or just adult degenerates) throw things off freeway overpasses onto cars below. That can be particularly deadly when the person below is going 70mph and not expecting that to happen.

  32. NYC is notorious for having scaffolding covering buildings for decades ever since a piece of concrete fell from the 7th floor of a building and killed a college student back in [1979](https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/17/archives/falling-masonry-fatally-injures-barnard-student-what-could-i-do.html). If you ever visit NYC and wonder why you can’t see most of the buildings in the neighborhood you’re in it’s because of a similar reason to what you mentioned

  33. Off the top of my head, I know there are cases where careless people (say, idle teens) have tossed rocks off overpasses and killed drivers passing underneath them.

  34. I’ve heard of stories of people committing suicide by jumping off of buildings and they end up landing on someone walking down below.. haven’t seen it personally though.

  35. We had a case last year in San Diego where a man committed suicide by jumping off a building and landed on a woman walking by on the sidewalk and killed her too. Very sad.

  36. I have heard of people getting hit with stuff falling off of a construction scaffold in New York City once or twice. It’s not common, but it definitely has happened.

  37. Back in the 90s some teens tossed a bowling ball off a building as a joke. It bounced off the bumper of a car, went through the windshield of another car and hit and killed a baby. The media tried to blame Beavis and Butthead.

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