Some sleuths have understandably latched onto this detail and suggested it was a likely explanation behind Lams strange behavior in the elevator. But even if Elisa Lam had been suffering from mental health issues, how did she end up dead? It was, in the words of one neighbor, a "horrifying . [19] A few days before her disappearance, Lam attended a live taping of Conan in Burbank, but was escorted off the premises by security due to disruptive behavior. But Lam hadnt booked a stay at the Cecil. "She was outgoing, very lively, very friendly" while getting gifts to take home to her family, Orphan told CNN. Another tenant said the woman left scratch marks on the walls of the elevator. She had just come by Amtrak train from San Diego and was headed to Santa Cruz as part of her solo trip around the West Coast. Sept. 17, 2020, 8:47 AM PDT / Source: TODAY. Sign in Mother killed in escalator incident CNN 14.8M. Elisa Lam with a friend during graduation. Many of the commentators found it unsettling to watch. And so, with no leads, they chose to release the four minutes of jarring elevator footage of Lam to the public on February 14, causing a frenzy online and in the media. Without necessarily presenting new evidence, the documentary largely de-shrouds the mystery surrounding the case by featuring the firsthand testimony of the coroner, investigators, and staff from the Cecil Hotel who had previously not spoken publicly on the matter. Return to the second floor. According to a statement by the chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, the tank in which Lams body was found had to be drained completely and then cut open from the side to remove her five-foot-four frame. Xiang Liujuan, 30, was travelling on an upward escalator with her son, and as she stepped onto a metal panel at the top of the escalator, it gave way, catching her and dragging her down. See how this article appeared when it was originally published on NYTimes.com. Similarly, her body is only discovered when a maintenance worker is called to the house to address a water pressure issue. The documentary does its best to fact check a number of the most prominent conspiracy theories about the Lam case. More recently, a gaming studio came under fire after users of the game YIIK: A Postmodern RPG found undeniable resemblances to Lams case in the storyline. Is climate change killing Australian wine? Hotel manager Amy Prices statements in court strongly support this theory. Would this tragedy have happened? asked a newspaper published in the eastern province of Zhejiang. On February 19, 2013, twenty days after Lam was last seen, a hotel staffer was sent up to the roof of the hotel to check on the water tanks after several guest complaints about low pressure and murky water coming out of the taps. Some people were convinced Elisa was playing The Elevator Game (Credit: The Cecil Hotel/Netflix) Players must then push the button to the first floor. In 2013, Elisa Lam was staying at Los Angeles' Cecil Hotel when she suddenly . Since opening its doors in 1927, the Cecil Hotel has been plagued by 16 different non-natural deaths and unexplained paranormal events. A student at Huaqiao University got stuck in the school elevator and died of suffocation, this incident happened in Xiamen. [2][26] In approximately two and a half minutes of footage, Lam, alone, makes unusual moves and gestures. CBS News/YouTube. These incidents have put the safety of elevators and escalators once again under the spotlight. The footage showed a girl in an elevator who was never seen again. An obvious reference to Elisa Lam and her bizarre elevator episode. On the same day, a young woman was killed when she got stuck in the gap between the floor and a goods elevator, in the southern city of Wuxi. [1], On February 13, after another week with no sign of Lam, the LAPD released a video of the last known sighting of her taken in one of the Cecil's elevators by a video surveillance camera on January 31. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The breakdown pointed out three key observations: 1) Lam took at least one antidepressant that day; 2) Lam had taken her second antidepressant and mood stabilizer recently, but not that day; and 3) Lam had not taken her anti-psychotic recently. According to the coroner featured in the docuseries, her autopsy revealed that she had not been taking the full dosage of her medication around the time of her death. Rescuers try to remove Elisa Lams body from the water tank on the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel. What if the management staff had gone to look inside the elevator before shutting off the power? Santiago Lopez, who was the first to find Lams body, described in detail how much effort he had to exert just to find her body. Lam, 21 at the time of her death, was found dead in a water tank on top of the . Carrie O'Connor, 38, was crushed to death inside an elevator shaft while moving heavy furniture into her new home at an apartment block in Alston, Boston. After two days, she checked into the Cecil Hotel,[18] near Downtown's Skid Row. At the scene, authorities told Boston 25 News that they had been responding to reports of a woman trapped. [10], In mid-2010,[11] Lam began a blog named Ether Fields on Blogspot. "Though it's mostly fiction, we wanted people to see it and feel like she was a real girl and a familiar girl and not just a police report. Racist Chinese woman party 2 . [36] Investigators and experts have however noted that the concentration of her prescription drugs in her system indicated that she was undermedicating or had stopped taking her medications recently. Show more 590 views Getting Stuck For About 45 Minutes On Some. In 1985, Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, lived on the top floor of the hotel during his monstrous killing spree. A teenage girl in China lost her life this week after an elevator malfunctioned and shot up 30 floors while she was trapped inside . It is an important finding to note given that the use of antidepressants to treat bipolar disorder can risk inducing manic side effects if done without caution. As Crime Scene depicts, inexplicable coincidences and strange oddities in the casesuch as the uncanny similarity to the plot of 2005 horror film Dark Water or a government administered tuberculosis test in the area at the time entitled Lam-Elisakept conspiracy theorists active online for years following Lams death. A woman, 43, died in China after being trapped in a lift for a month when maintenance workers shut off the power supply after failing to properly check if anyone was inside the elevator. [54] In late spring, creator Ryan Murphy said the next season would be set in a hotel in present-day Los Angeles. What also remains a mystery is how the woman went missing for so long without anyone raising alarm. It features the haunting, and now famous, elevator surveillance . Police in the Chinese city of Xi'an launched an investigation after a woman's body was discovered last week inside an elevator at the apartment complex where she lived. Her family had been wary of her traveling by herself but the young student was determined to go at it alone. 6 Elevator maintenance men returning to work after a month-long break for Chinese New Year made a horrific discovery last week when they opened the cab of a broken lift and found the body of a woman . Netflix series Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel examines the case of Elisa Lam, whose body was found in a water tank, and the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding her demise. ", "Body Of Elisa Lam, Canadian Tourist. Lam's death is investigated on the Nov. 30 episode of Real Life Nightmare on HLN (8 p.m. ET/PT). Feb. 27, 2004. We think she starved to death in there.. "She was moving something in (the elevator) in a box because I could hear the box moving outside my door, and then I heard her screaming," first-floor tenant Leanne Scorzoni told NBC10 in Boston. [28], Several theories emerged to explain her actions. Residents of Ms. Wus development complained about broken lights, water and power cuts, and constant elevator breakdowns, the Beijing Youth Daily said. A video posted to the Internet after Lam's death showed that the hotel's roof was easily accessible via the fire escape and that two of the lids of the water tanks were open. It was one of dozens of newspaper and Internet commentaries lamenting the death. In one scene of the game, main character Alex receives a video file showing another character, Sammy, in an elevator. Elisa Lam's death in a water tank at the notorious Cecil Hotel shocked Los Angeles in 2013. Read about our approach to external linking. She ran to the elevator to seek refuge but the dog followed her. Part of HuffPost Crime. I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying face-up in the water approximately twelve inches from the top of the tank, Lopez said, as reported by LAist. A woman died Wednesday when a New York City elevator unexpectedly rose as she was stepping in, c. . Elisa Lam's Strange Behavior in Elevator, Netizen Reactions by Peter Barefoot Tuesday, February 19, 2013, 10:00 am 1 From Youku: Elisa Lam Video It has already been two weeks since 21-year-old Chinese-Canadian UBC student Elisa Lam mysteriously disappeared in downtown Los Angeles on February 1st, and her whereabouts remain unknown. The last minutes of the video show Lam standing by the left side of the door, moving her hands in random gestures. [58][59] The music video recreates the elevator security footage. Ascend to the tenth floor. The victim . business woman elevator. They were on the fifth floor when the cable broke. The tower crane operator, who went by the online handle Xiaoqiumei, had more than 100,000 followers, regularly shared videos of her daily life and occupation operating the huge crane. About four hours later, a 29-year-old Asian woman was walking down Park Avenue near East 30th Street when the suspect walked past her and waited at the corner, police said. People from the elevator repair company and the maintenance firm in charge of the faulty elevator were detained by the police, the newspaper Beijing Morning Post said on Monday. Back then, the hotel was in such disarray that Ramirez nude stunt barely raised an eyebrow. Besides the obscuring of the timestamp, they claimed, parts had been slowed down and nearly a minute of footage had been removed. At least, not without anyone noticing. Video, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, MasterChef Australia host Jock Zonfrillo dies, UK chip giant Arm files for blockbuster share sale, Adidas sued by investors over Kanye West deal, Pope urges Hungarians to 'open doors' to migrants, US bank makes last ditch bid to find rescuer. Theres no way to identify the girl on the elevator, as her face is pixelated. The chilling death of Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian tourist whose body was discovered in the water tank of a Los Angeles hotel, sparked a global frenzy in 2013 . Thats why it struck her parents as unusual when they didnt hear from their daughter on Jan. 31, the day she was scheduled to check out of her LA hotel, the Cecil. With Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers. IE 11 is not supported. man woman elevator. [60], On January 13, 2021, Netflix announced a four-episode docuseries titled Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, which explores Lam's death and premiered on February 10, 2021. Her behavior in the elevator was explained in the film as her playing "the Korean elevator game", in which pressing buttons in a certain order summons ghosts of people who died in the hotel. O'Connor, who was a French lecturer at Boston University, was moving something heavy into the elevator when the accident occurred, according to a neighbor who heard it. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Howard Halm ruled that the death of Elisa Lam was unforseeable because it had happened in an area that guests were not allowed to access, so the lawsuit was dismissed. At another department store in 1902, a group of women shoppers were injured in an elevator accident. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 1. Which is, among other reasons, why the elevator video of Lam on the last day she is seen alive was so frightening to so many people online. Feb. 10, 2021 11:21 AM PT. Video Chinese Woman Saves Child Before Dying in Escalator Accident - ABC News Chinese Woman Saves Child Before Dying in Escalator Accident A woman was sucked into an escalator shaft when a crate at the top came loose. [41], Apart from the question of how she got on the roof, others asked if she could have gotten into the tank by herself. What many find quite shocking is that since the death in Jingzhou, there have been two reported serious incidents. Two people -- both staff members at the maintenance company -- were arrested and will reportedly face charges of involuntary manslaughter. It didnt help that the Canadian tourist, who was .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}last seen on January 31, 2013 during the Los Angeles leg of her West Coast trip, happened to be staying in the notorious Cecil Hotel, a skid row landmark famously shrouded in darkness and crime. A Chinese woman was killed Sunday after a floor panel at the top of a mall escalator collapsed under her feet. Band member Mark Kozelek said in an interview "I've come to the conclusion that nobody died in the water tank. She was last seen alive on January 31 and was reported missing by her parents on February 1. 5, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Furthermore, how did she end up in the hotels water tank? The most famous death associated with the hotel, other than Lams, was the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. Lam worried that her transcript would look suspicious with so many withdrawals and that it would result in her being unable to continue her studies and attend graduate school. "But we didn't search every room," Sgt. All four tanks were 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4m) cylinders propped up on concrete blocks;[42] there was no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the water. Over a series of flashbacks spread out across the first season, which began airing in 2014, it is revealed that a sorority girl missing at the start of the season was murdered and that her body has been hidden in the water tank on the roof of the sorority house. [50], In March 2014, a little over a year after Lam's death, brothers Brandon and Philip Murphy sold a horror script, titled The Bringing, that uses the investigation into it as a backstory for a fictional investigating detective's slowly unraveling sanity. [28] Others suggested that she might be under the influence of ecstasy or some other party drug, but none was detected in her body. Xiang Liujuan, 30, was travelling on an upward escalator with her son, and as she stepped onto a metal panel at the top of the escalator, it gave way, catching her and dragging her down. Hundreds of residents in the Gaoling District of the city, where the woman died confined between the 10th and 11th floors of her apartment building, gathered to rally last week, according to photographs and accounts on Chinese websites. It brought the case to the public's attention through the media. When the doors fail to close after she returns, she leaves; the doors close later. A WOMAN brutally killed in a shock elevator accident was crushed after becoming trapped between the door and the shaft wall, a new report says. The Anliang Department Store and Shenlong Elevator Ltd have yet to respond publicly to the investigation. Protesters gathered outside the West 43rd . Lam was last seen alive in an eerie 2013 viral video that showed her acting bizarrely in a Cecil Hotel elevator. If . [53], In 2015, the media speculated that the fifth season of American Horror Story was inspired by Lam's death. Woman dies after elevator accident Boston University lecturer Carrie O'Connor, 38, was loading a box into the elevator when it plunged to the first floor. The case of Elisa Lam, the 21-year-old Canadian student who went missing on January 31, 2013, and eventually was found dead in a rooftop water tank at the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, created a mystery-solving spree in the online community, especially after elevator footage of Lam was released by authorities. She also had a love of travel and lived by the mantra of "luggage should never be dusty," her mother told BU Today. The family of a doctor partially decapitated in an elevator accident settled for an undisclosed amount with the company that maintained the elevators at Christus St. Joseph Hospital . The 21-year-old appears frantic and paranoid in the four minutes of footagepressing multiple buttons, peeking nervously out of the doors, and hiding against the wall of the unmoving elevator from what appears to be an unseen person. Ultimately she is found to have been posing as a sex worker in order to investigate another guest at the hotel. On May 14, 1986, WJJS news radio reporter Ron Lee Alexander was one of seven people who jumped off an elevator in the Allied Arts Building in Lynchburg, Virginia, after it stopped between the 5th and 6th floors. Her body was found by maintenance workers in the Chinese city of Xi'an. Instead, the crew reportedly called out once to check if anyone was inside. Authorities have launched an investigation after a woman in Boston was killed in an elevator accident at her apartment building on Monday. What are the maintenance staff doing in the shopping mall"? did not return to repair the machine until March 1, called out once to check if anyone was inside. Scorzoni told NBC10 she spoke with a man who told O'Connor that the box she was moving into the elevator wouldn't fit and that he thought the box somehow triggered the elevator to move before she was in it. To start the game, the player(s) need to enter the elevator. One clue comes from security camera video of Lam inside a hotel elevator the last day she was seen. In June of 2006, an elevator in the Minato Ward of Tokyo, Japan malfunctioned, beginning to ascend while the doors were still open and causing the death of a 16-year-old high school student. For example, one summary of Lams toxicology report was posted online by a Reddit sleuth with an obvious interest in medicine. The woman, in her 40s, has been identified in news reports only by her surname, Wu. 5. Elisa Lams mysterious demise was not the first to happen at the Cecil Hotel. They were protected by heavy lids that would be difficult to replace from within. The police searched the premises of the Cecil but couldnt find her. They were widely criticized for doing this so soon after the death. In a January 2012 blog post, Lam lamented that a "relapse" at the start of the current school term had forced her to drop several classes, leaving her feeling "so utterly directionless and lost." Carrie O'Connor, 38, died on Monday of traumatic asphyxia in the Allston neighborhood of Boston after she was "trapped in the doorway of the first floor and the elevator," according to a police report obtained by The Boston Globe. When the autopsy results for Lams case came out, it only served to ignite more questions. As CCTV News noted, the workers were required to open the elevator door before shutting the power off.