NEW ORLEANS — Witnesses told police a University of Southern Mississippi student who fell to his death early Saturday repeatedly rammed a window in a New Orleans hotel before breaking through it.
The witness accounts of the death of 20-year-old Cole D. Whaley are in a police report detailed by New Orleans news outlets Wednesday.
One witness said Whaley was yelling and screaming in the hotel room before his fall. Another said he yelled “Let’s go swimming” and rammed the window three times before it broke. He fell from the 11th story to a fourth-floor pool deck.
Authorities say the results of toxicology tests are not in yet.
New Orleans’ coroner, Dr. Jeffrey Rouse, classified the preliminary cause of death as “blunt-force injuries.” A final cause will be announced following an investigation and toxicology results, Rouse said in a statement earlier this week.
Whaley’s obituary said he was from Spanish Fort, Alabama, which is near Mobile. His funeral was set for Wednesday afternoon.
He was in New Orleans for a Pi Kappa Phi fraternity function.
Officers responding to a call about the incident arrived at the DoubleTree Hotel at 12:52 a.m. Saturday. Whaley was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:07 a.m.
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