‘It didn’t have to end this way.’ Family of Penn State student who died in a fall left wondering what’s next
State College police wrapped up its investigation Thursday into the death of the Penn State student who fell 11 stories down a trash chute at her off-campus apartment, but her family is still forced to move on without the middle child who had a vibrant and infectious personality.
Justine Gross, her mother said, was a bright, top-notch woman destined to have a stellar career on Wall Street.
“She came from a home where we embrace academics, with a sense of growth, a sense of love, a sense of be all you can be,” Francoise Gross said Friday. “She had every ounce of support to become everything she wanted. She was awesome.”
Francoise Gross continues to have questions about the way State College police and the Centre County Coroner’s Office handled the investigation into her daughter’s death, and frustrations about Penn State’s largely mum reaction.
Justine, a former captain of her New Jersey high school cheerleading team and honors student, only applied to Penn State. She flirted with the idea of sending an application to UCLA, but opted to come to Happy Valley because it felt like home.
The university’s “We Are” mantra and revered football team was the “perfect combination,” her mother said. That union, she added, “meant everything” to Justine.
She was also looking forward to participating in Thon, the 46-hour dance marathon that’s raised tens of millions of dollars to fight pediatric cancer that’s slated to begin Friday evening.
“Our heartfelt sympathies remain with her family and friends during this very difficult time,” university spokeswoman Lisa Powers wrote in an email Thursday.
The 19-year-old sophomore was in the university’s College of Liberal Arts when she plunged down a trash chute at Beaver Terrace. She died in November of blunt force trauma and her death was ruled accidental, the county coroner’s office said Thursday.
Neither the borough police department nor the county coroner’s office gathered any evidence that her death was “criminal in nature.” The group had a nearly hourlong teleconference Wednesday with Gross’ parents to wade through their daughter’s autopsy.
The results showed THC — the compound that gives marijuana its high — and an “elevated” level of alcohol in her liver tissue at the time of her death.
Justine’s final hours were captured on surveillance video from inside the apartment building at 456 E. Beaver Ave.
She left her apartment on the 10th floor to visit a man at his apartment on the seventh floor, where he offered her a blunt, her mother said. She left about 40 minutes later, walking unsteadily.
“She looked frantic, like she was looking for help,” Francoise said.
Video later showed Justine barefoot and alone on the 11th floor, rushing into the room with the trash chute, her mother said. She wasn’t seen on video again.
Her body was found about 27 hours later at the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority transfer station. No charges were filed in Justine’s death.
Her mother declined to say if the family is planning to pursue a lawsuit. Their only immediate plans, Francoise said, are to process the past three months, which she described as “dreadful” and “heart-wrenching.”
“I wake up with a knot in the center of my core. It’s like a terrible pain ... that just will not go away. Every day, it just aches at you,” she said. “... It is just a big heartache. It’s something you just are trying to understand why. It didn’t have to end this way. It didn’t need to be this way.”
