The death of a Boston-area student is under investigation after he fell from the roof of an Allston apartment early Saturday morning following a brawl at the party he was attending.
Shawn Dow, a 21-year-old Art Institute of Boston junior, plummeted four stories from the roof at 14 Glenville Ave. around 2:30 a.m. Saturday into an alley behind the building, less than an hour after students at the party say a fight erupted into bloodshed in the building’s stairwell. Dow was brought to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Dow’s death is still under investigation, and although police, who are still awaiting autopsy results, believe he died as a “result of blunt trauma sustained from a fall,” students at the party say they are certain Dow was involved in the fight.
An Art Institute sophomore who was at the party said she left moments before the fight began and returned when a friend called her to tell her about Dow’s fall.
“When I got back, he was in an ambulance and cops were everywhere,” said the student, who wished to remain anonymous. “There were a lot of people talking about what happened and what they think they saw. It was like a big game of telephone. Someone says they saw someone being pushed out a window, someone says someone got pushed off the roof, but no one really knows.”
The student said a group of men fighting before Dow’s body was found had been smashing each other’s heads into banisters and cracking beer bottles over each other, making it impossible for partygoers to leave through the front door.
The student said she saw Dow’s body entering the ambulance and found it suspicious that his face was bloody.
“Isn’t it a little odd that he had so much damage to his face but was lying on his back, making his fall make no sense?” she said. “It strikes me as horrifying and odd that the police have reports of kids being spotted holding hammers, beating kids’ faces in, and [Dow] wasn’t beaten — he fell?”
Art Institute junior Bradley DiFoggio, who was Dow’s roommate last year, said he was in shock when he heard that Dow had died.
“He was just the nicest person on the face of the earth,” DiFoggio said about the man he described as his best friend. “He would do anything for his friends without hesitation. He was always smiling and put everyone around him in a good mood, too.”
DiFoggio, who left the same party a couple hours before Dow fell, said the man who was known as “Griff” to his friends was a photography major who loved to document things “the way he saw them.”
Curry College senior SJ Salerno, Dow’s ex-girlfriend, said Dow was the type of person “you wanted to be friends with.”
“One time I got my car towed and didn’t have the money to get it released,” Salerno said. “He paid the tow charge and wouldn’t let me pay him back.
“He always knew how to make you smile, even when you have had the worst day of your life,” she added. “He would walk into a room and everybody would know him or of him. I will miss everything about him.”
Police said they would not comment on further details until they receive the autopsy report.
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