Queen’s University student dies after fall through skylight

KINGSTON, Ont. – On the final day of classes for the fall semester on Friday, students, staff and faculty at Queen’s University were in shock after the on-campus death of the second student at the Ontario university in the past three months.

Thursday night, two first-year students crashed through a domed skylight on the roof of Duncan McArthur Hall around 7:30 p.m., falling three stories into the main hub of the building’s library.

Habib Khan, 19, was pronounced dead at hospital. Stephen Nagy, 18, is in hospital in serious but stable condition. Police said they were waiting to speak to Nagy to determine why the two were on the roof.

Staff and students were in the library at the time, said John Pierce, associate vice-principal and dean of student affairs.

On Friday, a sign on the library’s doors announced the area would remain closed until at least Monday "due to an emergency." A few chunks of the Plexiglas skylight lay on the carpeted floor of the library, right next to a Christmas tree. Flags around campus flew half-mast.

While it’s not unheard of for students to be on the roof of McArthur Hall, which is located approximately two kilometres from the university’s main campus and a block north of Kingston Penitentiary, police couldn’t say how the two made it up there and what caused them to tumble through the skylight.

A coroner’s investigation is underway and police said it appeared Khan’s death was the result of an accident.

Khan was a Canadian citizen whose parents work in Saudi Arabia, Pierce said. He had celebrated a birthday in mid-November.

On the first day of classes this fall, Cameron Bruce, 18, a first-year engineering student from Westport, Connecticut, died after accidentally falling through a sixth-floor window of a residence building on the main campus.

"The community always rises to these challenges," Pierce said. The campus, he said, will get through this latest incident the way it made through everything else this year. "It’s stronger the more it works together."

In March another student, Jack Windeler, 18, died by suicide in his dorm room.

And late last month, the university decided to cancel its fall homecoming until at least 2013, following another unlawful street party in the student housing area that saw police arrest 100 revellers, hand out 200 liquor citations, and try to contain a crowd that peaked at an estimated 2,500.

"It’s been a challenging year for students," said Pierce. "It’s a shock and a tragic set of events and we’re profoundly affected by this."

Much as it has had to do for the past 12 months, students, staff and faculty have had to come together in grief and make sense of a tough situation. Counsellors were dispatched to the residence buildings where the two students lived and were made available to university staff. At the same time, professors were trying to sort out how to academically accommodate students who are heading into the exam period, Pierce said.

"You’re right about it being a tough time of the year," Pierce said.

While deaths on campus are not unheard of, the numbers this year at Queen’s are slightly above normal. According to an internal Queen’s report about suicide, a university can expect about one or two deaths per 20,000 students in a 12-month period. Khan’s death makes three deaths this year at Queen’s, which has an enrolment of approximately 23,000 students.