Death identified as suicide at Tech

By Ashley Hopkins, news editor
Posted on November 29, 2007

After conducting an investigation, Virginia Tech officials have determined that the student who fell from the seventh floor of a campus dormitory jumped intentionally.

Freshman communications major Jonathan David Jones, 19, of Fredericksburg, jumped from a window of a study lounge in Pritchard Hall, an all-male dormitory housing 1,000 students, Monday night, according to Virginia Tech officials. 

Police received a call at 7:04 p.m. from someone who said that they heard a thud near the dorm and saw a person lying on the ground outside the door.

Police and emergency response teams responded immediately, and the Blacksburg rescue squad rushed Jones to Montgomery Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead Tuesday night.

While the preliminary investigation indicated that Jones had committed suicide, the state medical examiner’s office in Roanoke will make a final and official determination, according to Tech officials. 

This is not the first time a situation like this has occurred at Virginia Tech.

On Oct. 26, 2002, Ryan Edmund Evans committed suicide after falling from a seventh-floor window of Lee, and in 1990 a student survived after jumping from the third floor of the same building.

In 1997 another death occurred when a student fell from the eighth floor of Slusher Tower.