Posted on 10/29/2010 12:35:50 AM PDT by tlb
A Notre Dame student killed Wednesday in a tower collapse tapped out two chilling Twitter posts before his fatal 30-foot plunge.
In the first post, Declan Sullivan, who was perched on a scissor lift to film a Fighting Irish football practice, made a dark joke predicting his horrific fate.
"Gusts of wind up to 60 mph. Well today will be fun at work. I guess I’ve lived long enough," Sullivan wrote at 3:22 p.m., just as practice was getting started.
More than 40-minutes later, the 20-year-old junior from Long Grove, Ill., was frozen with fear as wind-gusts approached 50 mph.
"Holy ---. Holy ---. This is terrifying," Declan wrote.
Around 45 minutes after that post, the tower collapsed, crashing through a fence some 30 feet below and landing on a street that runs between two athletic facilities.
Sullivan died later at South Bend's Memorial Hospital.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I’d have thunk that long ago the system of sending a man up on a rickety platform with a camera to film games would have been replaced with a remotely controlled camera on a pole.
Too bad none of the coaches told him to get down. The kid was probably afraid he’d seem like a wimp if he refused to film that day.
Yeah kind of just makes sense.
What the hell is a chilling tweeted twice before tower collapse....?
Natural selection.
if he won’t do his job,
they will find someone else who will
Those scissor lifts aren’t exactly what you’d call “rickety,” but extended to full height they don’t offer much stability against gusty crosswinds. ND is in seriously deep kimchee on this one; SOMEBODY should have had the sense to either lower the platform by about ten feet, or just tell the guy to stay on the ground.
Well and after all the camera must have been getting some pretty (((shaky))) pictures well before the tower toppled... wasn’t anybody on the ground looking at a monitor?
I was wondering if it was a sudden gust of wind that caused the lift to fall over. Evidently not.
The poor kid should have had better sense and come down from there.
Exactly.
Over and over we hear "You are responsible for your own safety" "Safety begins with YOU", etc.
Screw the job. If you don't get to cash your paycheck, it doesn't do you much good.
PS: Prayers up for the kid’s family and friends, no matter what, that’s gotta hurt.
Dumbasses usually do.
I don’t think this is the student’s fault. The faculty of Notre Dame should taken the lift down as it was only rated for 25mph winds.
“Dumbasses usually do.”
If you have kids, you might want to say a prayer and ask for forgiveness for that rotten statement. Karma and all that.
What is it about journalists that prevents them from using facts?
The scissor lift ‘tower’ didn’t ‘collapse,’ it was blown over by a wind gust.
A person should always know how to do a PLF if they are going up on high things.
You expect college kids to sometimes do stupid things.
That's why they so often get called "kids."
Adults who employ them are supposed to be responsible.
But they were too busy trying to win a game. Not a war, a game.
No way to spin this one. Whoever was in charge should never have let, or required that kid to stay up in a tower during high winds. Do they also continue practices with lightening flashing all around?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.