A Boston University graduate student died early Saturday morning after falling three stories off of a balcony in Allston, police officials said.
The Boston Police Department responded to a call Saturday in the area of Commonwealth Avenue and Walbridge Street at 12:49 a.m., according to police. Upon arrival, officers found BU graduate student Babur Khalique lying unconscious in front of 5 Walbridge St.
Khalique was transported to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Khalique had been drinking throughout part of the day and into the evening, BPD spokesman Officer Joe Zanoli said. At some point, Khalique had fallen and cut his head, and friends had accompanied him onto the balcony, where he began vomiting, Zanoli said.
‘Some time after, [Khalique’s friends] went inside, then went out again later to check him, and that’s when they discovered he fell off the balcony and was below on the sidewalk,’ Zanoli said.
Police are awaiting autopsy results later this week, Zanoli said.
University of Massachusetts-Boston student Mark Rotondi, whose apartment allegedly shares the same balcony from which Khalique fell, said he was in his apartment at the time of the BU student’s fall and heard it happen. Khalique was vomiting before he fell, Rotondi said.
‘I was reading a book on my couch and I heard one [person on the ground level] scream, ‘Are you kidding me?” he said. ‘That is when I took a look out the window.’
Rotondi said three different apartments use the same balcony, which is actually a New England-style fire escape. When Khalique fell, Rotondi said he felt the balcony move and heard the impact.
Khalique climbed out of the left-most window on the third floor balcony, Rotondi said.
‘It is really awkward to climb out onto the balcony,’ he said. ‘You have to be pretty aware.’
The Boston University community is ‘deeply saddened’ by Khalique’s death, BU spokesman Colin Riley said.
‘He was a brilliant and engaged medical and biomedical engineering student with a promising future,’ BU spokesman Colin Riley said in a statement. ‘His death is a great loss.’
Khalique is not the first BU student to die after falling from a building. Michael Robertson, a 20-year-old Boston University sophomore, died Jan. 21, 2007 after falling from the fourth floor of his South Campus dormitory on Mountfort Street.
Around Boston, four other students have fallen to their deaths in recent years. On Nov. 17, 2007 21-year-old Shawn Dow, an Art Institute of Boston junior, died after falling from the roof of an Allston apartment during a party. Northeastern University sophomore Brian Evans, 21, died Sept. 24, 2006 after falling from the roof of his Roxbury apartment building. Robert Wells, 21, died March 1, 2008 after falling five stories from his fraternity house on Beacon Street.
Most recently, Emmanuel College sophomore Gabrielle King died after falling from the third-story window of her Cummings Road apartment in Brighton.
Daily Free Press staff writers L. Finch and Taylor Miles contributed to the reporting of this story.
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