In 2021, This College Student Died After Plummeting 11 Stories Down A Trash Chute In Her Apartment Building
In 2021, Justine Gross was a 19-year-old Penn State University student known for her determination and spirited personality.
While attending high school in Summit, New Jersey, she was a varsity cheerleader and an honors student. Justine was also a lifelong member of Kumon, moving from student to tutor/grader at the age of 14.
She went on to attend UCLA Summer Programs before beginning her college career at Penn State. While there, Justine completed two summer internships at BNY Mellon and was a part of Volé, a dance organization.
“She loved music, dancing, learning about fashion and makeup, and lovingly teasing her family members. Justine had a vibrant and infectious personality that helped her connect with others easily,” her obituary reads.
Yet, during the fall semester of her sophomore year, Justine tragically died after plummeting 11 stories down a trash chute in her apartment building.
At the time, she had been living on the tenth floor of Beaver Terrace Apartments, which is only one block away from Penn State’s campus. And one evening, November 10, 2021, Justine wound up going downstairs to the seventh floor in order to hang out with a guy – whom she’d reportedly met two days earlier.
While she was in the man’s apartment, he supposedly offered Justine marijuana. Then, she reportedly had an adverse reaction and began to panic.
Security footage from the apartment building captured Justine leaving the man’s apartment. She was seemingly unsteady and swaying.
The man later claimed that he had tried to get Justine back to her own apartment, but she reportedly fled.
Change.org – pictured above is Justine
Then, only a few minutes afterward, Justine was seen on security footage running toward an eleventh-floor trash room. Prior to entering the room, Justine texted a friend on Snapchat at 11:22 p.m., writing only, “Something just happened.”
Next, she put down her cell phone and shoes in a stairwell before going into the trash room. This was the final time Justine was ever spotted alive on surveillance footage.
The trash room did not have any security cameras. However, investigators later determined that mere minutes after Justine sent that final text, she fell down the trash chute – a total of 11 stories – and landed in the connecting dumpster.
When Justine didn’t make it back to her apartment that evening, her roommates grew worried and ultimately filed a missing person report on November 11, the following day, at about 5:15 p.m.
At that time, authorities reviewed the building’s security footage and ultimately searched a trash transfer station known as the Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority. This is where the garbage from Justine’s apartment building was moved to. There, investigators found Justine’s body on November 12 at approximately 2:45 a.m.
An autopsy was conducted and confirmed that alcohol and marijuana had been present in Justine’s system when she died. Her cause of death was ruled an accident, the result of multiple acute blunt-force trauma because of her fall, according to the Centre County coroner.
Once the medical examiner confirmed these results, investigators determined foul play was not involved and closed Justine’s case.
However, authorities reportedly never interviewed the man she was hanging out with shortly before her death. The man, who remains unidentified, also would not answer questions from Justine’s family.
Her loved ones are not sure that her death was accidental, finding it hard to believe that Justine would willingly enter a trash chute – even if she was under the influence.
The strange circumstances surrounding her death have caused her case to gain attention on social media, with many believing that a reinvestigation is warranted.
In 2022, Justine’s family launched a Change.org petition to reopen her case. After receiving 5,720 signatures, the petition has since closed, and no recent updates have been shared.
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