REPORT FROM THE U.S.—Another woman has fallen to her death from a W Hotel, this time in Washington, D.C., as investigations continue into shattered glass and lawsuits at two separate W properties.
A woman fell to her death late Wednesday after drinking on the rooftop patio and climbing over a fence of the W Hotel adjacent to the White House, police told the Washington Post.
Witnesses told police the woman was seen hanging from an overhang one story below the rooftop around 11 p.m. The woman then dropped about 10 stories, witnesses reported.
Meanwhile, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide continues to cooperate with investigations involving broken glass at two other properties—both leading to injured guests and subsequent lawsuits. Officials at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Noble Investments are stressing the incidents are completely unrelated.
Falling glass from the 7-month-old W Austin Hotel has forced the property to close temporarily while almost 1,000 glass panels are replaced. Three falling glass incidents have been reported at the W Austin during the past two weeks.
And officials continue to investigate two separate broken-window incidents at the W Atlanta-Midtown, one from last year and another in May that lead to the death of one guest and severe injury of another.
“The W Austin and W Atlanta Midtown incidents are completely unrelated,” said a spokeswoman for Noble, which owns the W Atlanta-Midtown. “The circumstances around the two incidents are quite different and are totally unrelated. They involve two dissimilar types of buildings that were built at different times. The incident at the W Austin involved balcony glass on empty condos above the hotel and the incident at the W Atlanta Midtown involved a guestroom window.”
Austin incidents
Four people were hurt 10 June when a pair of glass panels fell from the W Austin’s balcony into the pool area. Two of the injured filed a lawsuit over the incident.
Shattered glass again fell from the 37-story W Austin both Monday and Tuesday of this week. No one was injured in those incidents as the pool was closed.
“The entire team here at the W couldn’t be more devastated that this has occurred, but unfortunately after consulting with numerous experts, we still do not know why this has happened,” Beau Armstrong, CEO of W Austin developer Stratus Properties, said in a statement.
After the third incident in less than two weeks, Stratus decided to close the hotel and move current and incoming guests to neighboring hotels. Residents of the condominiums are being ushered to temporary housing. Officials announced Monday they would replace almost 1,000 glass panels on the hotel’s balconies.
“We apologize to our hotel guests, our residents, our neighbors and to the city. We will make this right,” Armstrong said.
According to a separate statement from the W Austin and based on available information, experts believe one glass panel on the 31st floor was broken Monday and the resulting falling debris broke panels on the 29th and 22nd floors. It is unknown what caused the first panel to break.
To accommodate construction, three streets surrounding the hotel will be shut down.
Atlanta incidents
At the W Atlanta-Midtown on 28 May, two women “play fighting” during a birthday party in a 10th-floor guestroom crashed through a window, resulting in the death of one and the critical injury of another.
Read the incident report from the Atlanta Police Department.
The mother and father of the deceased have each filed lawsuits claiming the window through which the women fell was "not properly tempered for use as an outside wall window." Named in the lawsuit are W Hotel Management and Starwood, and three ownership entities: Noble, Noble-AEW Colony Square and AEW Capital Management.
After the death, two previous guests came forward and said they broke a window in the W Midtown last summer and paid US$600 for its repair. The men weren’t hurt when the glass panel in their room dislodged and fell to the ground.
"That was an awfully thin window. It seemed like it happened much too easily," one of the men told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month.
After last month’s death, Noble—which purchased the then-Sheraton Hotel from Starwood in 2007 and converted it to a W in 2008—issued a statement saying the hotel “is properly permitted and received its most recent certificate of occupancy when it became a part of the W brand in 2008.”
“This particular guestroom has a metal frame window system where six panes of glass are separated by two floor-to-ceiling vertical metal support frames and a full length horizontal metal support frame that is approximately three feet above the floor,” the statement reads. “During this incident, a single glass pane was partially broken. This pane was located below the horizontal metal support frame in the lower right-hand corner of the window system. No other glass panes or frames were cracked or damaged and the entire window system remains completely intact and firmly affixed to the interior room wall and the concrete exterior building wall.”