EFFORTPOST Defenestration - The act of throwing someone out of a window

There are several ways to murder somebody. All you need, for example, is a three-inch blade to sever a vital artery. A few minutes without oxygen and your target is dead. There are also several poisons available at your local supermarket.

The cruellest ways to murder someone involve terror and, of course, pain. Defenestration would be a horrible way to go. Imagine hurtling down several floors, knowing your death is coming yet being unable to stop. There's no soft hand to catch you. Just the hard embrace of concrete. This would undoubtedly elicit a primal kind of fear.

Today we'll look at three cases of defenestration. You'll get to decide who is a villain, who made a genuine mistake, and who is simply inscrutable.

1. Garry Hoy

This is an oldie but a goodie. If you've ever watched any of those "100 weirdest ways to die" shows, you've probably come across this case. Garry Hoy was a lawyer in Toronto. In 1993, he had a group of law students in one of the rooms of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower. To impress the students, he threw himself against the windows to demonstrate how robust the window was. This was a trick he had done several times, so he had full confidence to support his weight.

To be fair, the glass did hold his weight. The first time at least. The second time, the glass came out of his frame sending Hoy to his death. This could be seen as an act of self-defenestration. There is not much question surrounding malice with this one. It is evident that there was no ill-will by any parties. However, it is worth asking whether the glass company should suffer any liabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Garry_Hoy

2. The cruise ship death

Personally, I believe cruise ships should be banned. For mere enjoyment, they cause too much environmental damage. Several people have also died by falling out of cruise ships. We're discussing such a case next, and it involves a toddler.

Chloe Wiegand, 18 months old, was on holiday with her family. They had boarded the Royal Caribbean ship Freedom of the Seas and they were preparing to sail from Puerto Rico. Her grandfather, Salvatore Anello, had the child on the 11th floor where there was a play area for children. THe child wanted to see the view, so he took her to the edge of the room and, expecting for the child to lean on the window, let the child lean forward. Unfortunately, he discovered that there was no glass! The child fell out the window and to her death!

At first, this seems like a clear-cut case. The grandfather was old, couldn't see, and made a tragic error.

Not quite. Prosecutors obtained surveillance footage from the ship. It showed that the grandfather KNEW there was no glass. He is seen leaning over the railing for 8 seconds, clearly showing he knows there's no glass pane there. Following that, he picks up the toddler and holds her out of the window.

The grandfather was charged with negligent homicide, and he received 3 years probation in 2021.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/08/us/cruise-ship-death-grandfather-sentenced/index.html

It is worth noting that the parents don't seem to blame the grandfather. Instead, they sued the cruise line.

So where do you stand on the matter? Was this a case of old grandpa being clumsy? Or is there something a little more sinister going on?

3. Amber Hilberling

In 2011, Amber was married to Joshua Hilberling. There were of course some moments of fighting, but what couple doesn't have their off days? One day, they were in their apartment at the University Club Tower, when another argument broke out. It is worth noting that Amber was pregnant at the time. The arguing got physical, and she eventually pushed her husband, causing him to fall out of the window and to his death. He died instantly.

Amber has always insisted that it was a mistake. This did not convince the judge, who served her 25 years in prison for murder. It was her interrogation immediately after that was particularly darning. She basically confesses, and it gets worse when they bring her grandmother in because she just says a bunch of incriminating shit. It's the oldest trick in the book to leave you in the interrogation room with a family member, then recording the conversation.

Much like me, prosecutors highlighted just how horrific such a death is:

>Prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum on April 22 noting that Amber Hilberling repeatedly admitted that she pushed her husband to his death on June 7, 2011. They say that although Hilberling does not have a criminal past, she "was certainly on notice that she and Josh had a volatile relationship and that she became angry and acted out violently toward Joshua."

>Prosecutors also point to the "horrendous" manner of death - that Josh Hilberling was alive as he fell from the 25th-floor window until he landed on the 8th floor parking garage.

>"Josh had seventeen stories to contemplate what was occurring," the sentencing memorandum states.

https://murderpedia.org/female.H/h/hilberling-amber.htm

Unfortunately, we'll never have the answers we seek regarding this case, as Amber was found dead in her cell in 2016. Her death was ruled a self-deletion.

It's easy to claim that she was the guilty party who committed cold-blooded murder, but I am sensitive to the fact that she was pregnant. She had two lives to take care off, and she was facing off against a larger man. Could it be that there was some degree of self-defence involved in this case?

4. Throwing stones

The last case is a bonus one, as it doesn't truly feature defenestration. In this case, someone isn't thrown out a window. Instead, something is thrown through a window, leading to a death.

Have you ever thrown stones off bridges? It seems to be a passtime for some teens, and it occasionally leads to death when the stones fall into cars. There is the infamous video which features a man driving when a brick suddenly falls through the window and kills his spouse. The sounds are unforgettable.

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Kenneth White was driving in Michigan when a rock came hurtling down from a bridge on the I-75, almost decapitating him. He died. Who would do such a heinous act? Well, it was 5 boys: Mikadyn Payne, Trevor Gray, Alexzander Miller, Mark Sekelsky and Kyle Anger. The one you need to worry about is Kyle Anger. He was the one who threw the rock that resulted in the murder. Among the juveniles, Anger was the oldest and was not a minor. He was 19 at the time.

This wasn't the first time they were playing this game. They had previously damaged several vehicles and thrown many objects off the bridge, including a shopping cart. When the police started closing in on them, they panicked. They sent frantic texts to each other and a game of the Prisoner's Dilemma ensued where they all agreed to shut up. That didn't hold up for long, and the younger boys lumped the blame onto Anger. Consequently, he received 3 years to 20 years in prison. The rest of the boys got a single year probation each.

>Murphy said Kyle Anger, who was 18 when the incident took place, appears to be the instigator behind the "game" and came up with the idea, based on interviews with the four younger suspects.

>"You know, the majority, the four younger boys, said it was Kyle's idea to do it, that he started it or came up with the idea," Murphy testified.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190216064703/https://www.abc12.com/content/news/Overpassing-was-somewhat-of-a-game-for-Clio-teens-in-I-75-rock-throwing-505916411.html

You can watch an interview of one of the parents of the boys on Dr Phil. I like the dad. He defends his son, which is predictable. However, he also accepts that his son has committed evil deeds and he needs punishment. So where we do we draw the line? How do we balance punishment with an understanding of the fragility of the young mind? Let's put it this way - do you believe these young boys have the same murderous intent as an adult killing their spouse?

Cases of teens fricking up always capture my attention. They're so young, it's barely fair to ruin their lives but there it is. They made bad choices, in a situation where they probably didn't have the maturity or experience to make better choices, and their lives are now totally ruined.

You can probably think of a few absolutely atrocious choices you made in your youth that continue to affect you to this day. In my case, it was studying English which has led to my current poverty and ability to shitpost here all day as a non-productive member of society. For these boys, they will now have to live with a kind of guilt they won't even fully understand until they are older. This stench will follow them everywhere, and their potential has been severely cut short. For some of these boys, they will probably never find stable employment, and they'll probably find their way back into prison against as a consequence.

There has to be a better solution to this.

Conclusion

Does true justice exist? I think the central problem is that we never have access to the pure truth. Everything we know and understand is interpreted by our minds and contextualized. Consequently, we never truly see what's there. How can justice be implemented in such a situation? We can only ever judge the models of people we have in our heads. We can never judge the people themselves, because we can never truly know them.

It is this conundrum that has me continually writing these pieces. Desperately, I try to understand these criminal cases and to make sense of human behaviour. Unfortunately, I am repeatedly left stumped. Human behavior is an enigma. Why would a grandfather hold a child out of a window? Would I throw stones if I was 16 and my friends were doing it? What truly happened in that apartment with Amber Hilberling?

We will never have the answers to these questions. However, by discussing these matters, we can hopefully, together, begin to make sense of human behaviour. Tune in next time for the following:

• Spider-Man 2 review

• Alan Wake 2 review

• Comprehensive comparison of all current-gen gaming systems

• Holly Willoughby queue-gate

• A look at the SCUM manifesto and Valerie Solanas