WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A 19-year-old Purdue University student who died early Saturday morning after a fall from a top-floor window of The Hub, a 10-story apartment complex that opened a month ago, climbed through a window and committed suicide, West Lafayette police said Monday.

West Lafayette Police Lt. Jon Eager said witnesses with the student that night told police they were trying to talk with her when she left the room, climbed through the window and jumped.

West Lafayette police on Monday confirmed that the student was Jessica Marrs. Marrs was a student from California who, according to Purdue’s directory, was studying in the university’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. (The Journal & Courier doesn’t typically name suicide victims unless the death happens in a public place.)

Marrs was found on Pierce Street, between Wood and State streets, more than 30 feet away from the building around 2 a.m. Saturday, just before bars in West Lafayette’s Village area closed on the first night of Purdue’s Homecoming weekend.

Katie Sermersheim, Purdue’s dean of students, declined to offer more about the student.

“The family has requested privacy in this matter and has asked that the university not release additional details,” Sermersheim said through a university spokesman. “We are saddened any time we experience a student’s death and offer our condolences and support to her family and friends.”

Eager said the student lived in the 10th-floor apartment. He said it wasn’t clear whether alcohol played a factor in the incident. He said an autopsy was planned.

Eager said a witness walking on Pierce Street at the time did not hear any commotion or yells for help from the 10th floor before the fall.

He said that when police arrived Saturday morning, the window in the apartment was open wide enough for someone to climb through.

The Hub opened in mid-August, just as Purdue students started moving in for the fall semester. Core Spaces and Up Campus Properties, a Chicago-based development team, built the project with 599 beds at the corner of Pierce and Wood streets, just down the street from Purdue’s Rawls Hall and Harry’s Chocolate Shop.

The Hub was the first of three apartment complexes of 10 stories or more in West Lafayette’s Village.

West Lafayette gave the complex a temporary occupancy permit, even though crews were still working on some aspects of the façade, Chad Spitznagle, the city’s building commissioner, said. Spitznagle said The Hub met or exceeded code, including on windows, before owners could rent rooms.

Building codes require that for any operable, exterior window located more than six feet above the ground outside, a window sill must be a minimum of 36 inches above the finished floor in the building. The code is intended to protect small children from falling from an open window, Spitznagle said.

Spitznagle said most of the window sills throughout The Hub are 42 inches above the floor.

Spitznagle said the city, in design negotiations with developers ahead of granting the necessary rezoning, did not ask for additional safety features on windows or balconies at the complex.

“As long as they meet the minimum standards of the code, that’s all that we’d be checking,” Spitznagle said. “If the owner wanted to provide more restrictions on there, we’d definitely work with them to make sure whatever changes they wanted met the building code.”

The same was the case for Hub Plus – an 11-story mixed-use complex under construction at State and Salisbury streets – and the Rise at Chauncey, which, at 16 stories at State Street and Chauncey Avenue, comes within two feet of the height allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration for that spot in the Purdue Airport’s flight path. A partnership of two Chicago firms of CA Ventures and R2 Companies, is building Rise at Chauncey.

Both of those projects are expected to open by the start of the fall 2019 semester.

Developers for The Hub, Hub Plus and Rise at Chauncey did not immediately return messages Monday.

Eleven of Purdue’s 17 residence halls have five stories or more and are considered high rises. Barb Frazee, executive director of university residences, said high rises built in the late-‘60s and ‘70s have louvered windows that fold out to give no more than eight inches of space.

Frazee said that after a suicide in 2008 at Hawkins Hall – a student fell from a fifth-story room – the university installed permanent stops that limit cracking the sliding windows to a couple of inches. She said the stops are included whenever the university replaces windows.

Sallie Fahey, Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission executive director, is in on conversations about West Lafayette projects that require rezoning from the earliest moments. That would include any project that reaches beyond the 35-foot limit on building height in the city’s zoning law.

“I suppose we haven't really considered suicide prevention design elements. I'd have to give a serious think about whether that should or should not be part of the equation,” Fahey said. “I think all of this will be a topic for the next planned development in the Village-Levee downtown area, whether the building is five stories or 13.

“In either case,” Fahey said, “this event is devastating.”

SERVICES AVAILABLE ON CAMPUS: Katie Sermersheim, Purdue’s dean of students, said the university offers a number of mental health services and support to students and the rest of campus. Among them:

► Purdue Student Help and Crisis Line: 765-495-HELP (765-495-4357)

► Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS): www.purdue.edu/caps/

► Suicide prevention training from Purdue Today: www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2018/Q3/dean-of-students-offering-qpr-suicide-prevention-gatekeeper-training,-student-of-concern-presentation.html

► Student of Concern reports in Purdue Today daily: www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2018/Q3/office-of-the-dean-of-students-offering-student-of-concern-resources.html

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.

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