A Penn State student whose body was discovered after she was reported missing last week died as a result of falling inside an 11th floor trash chute at a downtown State College apartment building, police confirmed on Friday.
Video evidence suggests 19-year-old Justine Gross was alone at 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 10 in the 11th floor hallway of Beaver Terrace, 456 E. Beaver Ave., before the fall, and in the waste disposal room below, State College police wrote in a statement.
Gross, a third-semester student from Summit, New Jersey, was last seen by friends that evening and was reported missing at 5:15 p.m. on Nov. 11.
The waste receptacle was removed by a borough refuse truck prior to her body being found, police said. State College police officers located her at 2:45 a.m. on Nov. 12 at the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority transfer station.
An investigation is ongoing. Centre County Coroner Scott Sayers said lab results from an autopsy will take about six weeks.
“The Centre County Coroner’s Office will determine the cause of death pending final lab testing results and information obtained throughout this ongoing investigation,” police wrote on Friday.
“At this point the incident still appears to be accidental in nature.”
Francoise Gross, Justine’s mother, told NJ.com that she learned her daughter met a man in the apartment building who offered her a marijuana blunt on the night of Nov. 10. She says she spoke to the man the day after her daughter went missing and he said Justine “had a really bad reaction, a panic, or whatever.”
Police reportedly showed Francoise Gross a video sequence of her daughter’s movements in the apartment building that night, according to NJ.com. The video allegedly showed Justine Gross leaving her 10th floor apartment and walking to the man’s apartment on the seventh floor.
She was then seen leaving the apartment with the man and walking unsteadily in the hallway, according to the report. Francoise Gross said the man told her he was trying to help Justine get back to her apartment after giving her “a smoke.”
She did not, however, return to her apartment. Francoise Gross said the next video showed Justine running on the 11th floor, apparently alone, and into the trash chute room, after which she was not seen again. Her cell phone and flip flops were found in the stairwell, Gross said.
Justine Gross reportedly sent a text message to a friend at 11:22 p.m. on Nov. 10 that said, “Something just happened.”
“That’s just not Justine. She would never do something like that, go down a chute,” Francoise Gross told NJ.com. “They want me to believe she walked into that chute. I believe someone was chasing her and she went into the chute, thinking it was a staircase.”
Police said on Friday that “eyewitness, video and forensic evidence” are being used to investigate the case.
All witnesses continue to “fully cooperate” with investigators, police said.
Anyone who may have information about the case is asked to contact the State College Police Department at (814) 234-7150, by email or by submitting an anonymous tip online.
