Temple University student dies after falling eight floors on to pedestrian | Philadelphia
Philadelphia This article is more than 9 years oldTemple University student dies after falling eight floors on to pedestrian
This article is more than 9 years oldFamily and friends mourn pay tribute to Rebecca Kim – ‘a humble, kind, intelligent girl’ – after plunge that left passerby in critical condition
An 18-year-old college student probably leaning out a window high above downtown Philadelphia fell eight stories on Thursday night, striking a woman on the sidewalk below. The student was pronounced dead minutes later, and the pedestrian left in critical condition.
As crowds milled through the city center around 6pm that evening, Rebecca Kim, a pre-pharmacy student at Temple University, probably slipped to her death after leaning over a narrow ledge, police inspector Scott Small told reporters later that night.
Temple University identified Kim on Friday as the victim in a statement that offered condolences to her family and friends, and said counseling services would be available for students.
The unidentified passerby remains in “critical, but stable” condition after fracturing a vertebra and losing several teeth.
“You’d never think that someone would fall on you while you’re trying to walk down the street,” another pedestrian nearby told CBS3 local news.
A police representative told the Guardian that Kim’s death remains under investigation, and that the two students Kim had been visiting at the Art Institute of Philadelphia had spoken with police. Small said on Thursday that Kim’s death could not yet be declared an accident, although at that point police had no evidence to suggest suicide or deliberate wrongdoing.
Kim grew up in Edison, New Jersey, and then the tightly knit community of Korean Americans who live in the suburbs north-west of Philadelphia.
Louis Lee, who accompanied Kim to her senior prom at Wissahickon high school, wrote a tribute to his lost friend on Facebook. “I woke up today to the news about what happened,” Lee begins. “It just seems like yesterday when we first met at community service.”
“I always wanted to visit Temple in my free time to visit you,” he writes, “and now I’m gonna regret that for the rest of my life. I could’ve seen you one last time, maybe even sing for you like I promised during prom. RIP Becca, I will truly miss you, I love you with all my heart.”
Kim graduated from Wissahickon with good grades, a spot in the National Honor Society and a transcript that included science competitions, the photography club and track meets.
Heidi Butt, Kim’s track coach and science teacher, said the you woman was “the sweetest person, softspoken but with a great sense of humor, a person who would never think ill of anyone”.
Butt said that Kim had gone to regional and state science competitions with her work, and shown rare love for process rather than results. “She was never the best on the track team, but she was always concerned with improving her time, with the process of it, of learning and improving for the joy of it.”
“She was just a humble, kind, intelligent girl,” Butt said.
Kim regularly attended Presbyterian services with her Korean-American family and arrived at Temple with a quiet vivaciousness on display in a video she posted online, during the early days of her first semester in college.
“I like nicknames, so Becca, Becky, Becks, Beckster, whatever works,” is Kim’s introduction to her Temple peers, and affability and enthusiasm quickly shine through her protestations of being “a pretty typical student” and a habit of self-deprecation: “I don’t know how to swim. I don’t understand how people just float on water – I could never do that.”
By listing almost at random the small details of her life, Kim hints at the person that her former teacher and coach describes: she liked “small social gatherings”, is “allergic to apples but I eat them anyway,” and recommends her favorite book, a work of pop science about introversion, while admitting “I’m a little biased.”
The theme of Kim’s video, apt for a first semester of college, is goals, and she at first rattles off items that are familiar to anyone who’s experienced late adolescence: good grades, making friends, working on “social skills because I can be pretty introverted and awkward”.
But about her larger goals in life she worried slightly, as every sensible 18-year-old does. “I feel like I never had any other huge, unique or interesting goals,” she says, “The future was too scary to think about. Instead I’d only dream.”
“I’m not a patient person, so setting long-term goals is not my thing,” she says. “I didn’t think too hard about what would happen before and during pharmacy school. Whatever happens happens.”
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