Colorado Girl Dies in Fall in Leningrad

A 17-year-old honors student on a student-exchange tour of the Soviet Union died in Leningrad in an apparent fall from her fifth-floor hotel room, school officials said Friday.

Mary (Melony) Hardaway was pronounced dead at the scene Tuesday, after a Soviet citizen found the girl’s body on the street beneath her window in the Kiev Hotel.

Spokesmen with the exchange program said 29 students from Colorado and Wyoming were near the end of a two-week tour Tuesday morning when Hardaway told the group’s two adult sponsors she was tired and wanted to skip a scheduled museum tour. Her body was found an hour later.

“It’s still up in the air about what happened,” said Cherry Creek High School speech teacher Gary Addington, an organizer of the People-to-People exchange programs. “There was no forced entry into the room and the door was bolted from the inside.”