UPDATED
It has been several days since an incident involving a Stradley Hall elevator tragically killed an Ohio State freshman Friday night and authorities remain tight-lipped regarding the exact details of the death and if it could have been prevented.

According to media reports from The Associated Press, Andy Polakowski was the last of a group of students to enter an elevator on the third floor of Stradley Hall when it began to unexpectedly descend towards the lobby with the elevator doors open.

Said Rick Amweg, assistant chief of the Ohio State campus police: “The elevator started to descend going down to the lobby before the doors closed, and he attempted to get off the elevator and he became pinned between the elevator and the building.”

Polakowski died of mechanical asphyxia (i.e. suffocation) after his chest and abdomen were crushed, according to the Franklin County Coroner.

Investigators have stated that there were 24 people on the elevator at the time of the accident. Given that the elevator’s capacity was 2,500 pounds, the elevator was almost certainly overloaded, as each student would have had to weigh 104 pounds at the most to remain within the limit.

Campus police and state officials from the Ohio Department of Commerce, the state’s regulatory agency for elevator safety, have said little else about Polakowski’s death and whether or better equipment could have prevented the accident. Department of Commerce officials returned to campus on Monday to investigate the scene further. In the meantime, both elevators in Stradley Hall have been shut down, leaving the dorm’s 400 residents on 11 floors having to take the stairs.

While we do not know why Polakowski tried to leave the elevator after it began to descend, nor why so many students were on the elevator, we do know how an elevator is supposed to operate - and it is not with the doors open. So the most glaring question about the accident is: Why was this elevator malfunctioning and able to operate with the doors wide open? Even if the elevator was filled above capacity, are there no safety protocols to prevent exactly what happened if a passenger attempts to exit an overloaded elevator?

According to a 2001 report from The Lantern, the lifespan of a typical elevator is only about twenty years, while the average lifespan of the 84 elevators the Office of Housing, Food Service and Events are responsible for are 35 years old… and that was five years ago. The report cited Steven Schick, the then assistant director of the office.

The same report cites that the most recent dorm elevator renovations were done in 1998, where approximately 80 percent of the elevators were replaced in Steeb, Smith, Park and Stradley.

However, the elevator Polakowski was on was by no means new, it was installed in 1958, which by Ohio State’s own admission in the 2001 report, would make it almost 30 years overdue for replacement. Indeed, incidents of students getting stuck on dorm elevators are by no means unheard of at Ohio State.

Department of Commerce officials have stated that the elevators in Stradley Hall are inspected twice a year. According to Ohio Revised Code § 4105.10, this is the minimum requirement for passenger elevators. It is the responsibility of Ohio State to fix any other maintenance problems.

Could this death have been prevented had the elevator been kept more current or undergone better maintenance? Could a young man’s life had been spared if Ohio State had simply kept the elevator in question up to date with a more current model? Andrew Polakowski’s friends, family, and fellow students will not know until police and the Department of Commerce finish their investigation. What is clear is that Polakowski will be deeply missed by those that knew him.

Known as Polo by his friends, Andrew Polakowski was a typical fun-loving college student. On his Facebook and Myspace profile pages the avid soccer player described himself a teenager who enjoyed hip hop music, Dane Cook, watching Sportscenter on ESPN, and playing poker. Seemingly unimportant questions Polakowski filled out now seem incredibly poignant and emotional, such as “In a Dodge Viper going 180 or on a crotch rocket…It’d be a rush!” in response to a question on how he would choose to die. The only goals he listed for himself that he would like to achieve for the year were to ‘get decent grades at OSU.’ This was Polakowski’s first quarter at Ohio State, where he served as a Welcome Leader to other students.

Friends have been leaving their memories and condolences on Polakowski’s Facebook and Myspace pages, serving as an almost online memorial to the young man who met such a tragic and untimely end. One can only hope that Andy’s friends and family get the answers they deserve regarding their lost loved one who had so much potential and should still be with them.

Technorati Tags: ohio state, osu, elevator, stradley, stradley hall, tragedy, andrew polakowski