Teen Plunges Through Window to His Death at College

An 18-year-old Diamond Bar man jumped through a glass window and fell seven stories to his death Tuesday from the Education-Classroom Building at Cal State Fullerton, authorities said.

Daniel Austin Eggleston, a freshman at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, left a note to his parents in his car, which was found parked in a lot at the Fullerton campus. The note said he was sorry that he was a disappointment to them. Less than two hours earlier, he had been involved in a car accident in West Covina, authorities said.

“We don’t know yet why he drove to our campus,” said Cal State Fullerton spokesman Jerry Keating. “Obviously, he was despondent because of the accident, though the note he left was more general.”

West Covina Police Lt. Ross Heaton said the accident occurred on Grand Avenue near the San Bernardino Freeway, where Eggleston ran a red light and hit another car. He said Eggleston appeared “real concerned about telling his parents.”

Eggleston suffered a minor cut over his left eye, but no other injuries were reported.

At 4:38 p.m., Eggleston plunged through a window on the sixth floor of the six-story education building and landed on a ground-level concrete driveway a story below the first floor. The sixth floor is an all-faculty floor. The window Eggleston broke through was at the south end of a long corridor, near a bank of elevators.

Although no one witnessed the fall, one person who was on the sixth floor at the time said he heard the sound of someone running in the corridor, then the breaking of the glass just before Eggleston’s body was found below.

“It’s tempered glass and very thick; it would have taken quite a bit of force to break through it,” Keating said.

Keating said campus police found Eggleston’s car in Lot F after getting a description of the vehicle from his parents, Eric and Doris Eggleston. It showed damage from the accident earlier in the day but was drivable. Eggleston lived at home with his parents, Keating said.

Eggleston was taken to St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

“It was a time of day when there weren’t many people on campus,” said Judy Mandel, university spokeswoman. Most day classes had ended and night classes had not yet started.

However, several people with classes inside the building gathered on a second-story walkway, which was splattered with blood, apparently where the young man struck it during his fall.

“We’re just heartsick about this,” said Sal Rinella, vice president of administration, who was at the scene a short time later.

There have been other suicides at Cal State Fullerton, a campus of about 25,000 students. Between 1977 and 1985, five people have jumped from the top of the eight-story Humanities Building. Officials have since installed barriers on the balconies of the top floors of that building and several others, including the west side of the Education-Classroom Building.