Two guests at the W Midtown-Atlanta hotel say a large glass panel busted out of their third-floor room following what they describe as almost incidental contact -- just as was alleged last month when two women crashed through a window in their 10th-floor room.
Friends say LaShawna Threatt, 30, and 28-year-old Ciara Williams were engaged in "horseplay" when they busted through the glass. Threatt died from injuries sustained in the fall, while Williams remains in critical but stable condition at Grady Memorial Hospital, her friend, Kay Clark, told the AJC Friday.
Fortunately, neither Damu Courtney or Damian Dalrymple were hurt when the glass panel in their room dislodged and fell to the ground last July. The two men were in town for a bachelor party.
"We were roughhousing and [Dalrymple] fell off the bed," Courtney, 36, told the AJC. "His back hit the glass and the pane totally shattered," creating a large opening in the ceiling to floor glass wall.
"He didn't hit [the window] that hard," said Courtney, of Los Angeles.
Dalrymple said he paid $600 to repair the glass.
"We were at a bachelor party and I had been drinking," said the 34-year-old Connecticut resident. "So I didn't want to create a hassle. But that was an awfully thin window. It seemed like it happened much too easily."
A W Hotel spokesman confirmed there was a broken window during the time the two men were guests but said they have little information about the incident.
"We do not know how it happened," the spokesman said.
Earlier Friday, the hotel chain was answering questions about glass panels that fell more than 20 stories from balconies at the W in Austin, Texas. Four people were injured by the falling glass, none seriously.
Management said those two incidents were "quite different" and "totally unrelated."
"At the W Austin, a panel of glass broke on balcony railings on two unoccupied condo residences located above the hotel," according to a statement. "As such, these are two completely separate incidents, at two very different types of buildings and locations (balcony railing versus window). Teams of experts are currently investigating each event independently."
The hotel's general manager, Drew McQuade, told the Austin American-Statesman "we feel fortunate there were not more people injured." He said engineering experts were investigating the incident.
Meanwhile, Threatt's mother and father are plaintiffs in a pair of lawsuits filed on behalf of their deceased daughter and now-orphaned granddaughter.
Maurice Threatt's complaint said the glass in a window in room 1012, where his daughter and her friends had gathered to celebrate her 30th birthday, had recently been replaced and it was "not properly tempered for use as an outside wall window."
--Staff writers Rhonda Cook, Joel Provano and Fran Jeffries contributed to this article.
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