A Georgia father is warning about the dangers of abandoned buildings after his 19-year-old daughter fell to her death while exploring in Atlanta.
According to FOX 5 Atlanta, 19-year-old Leah Palmirotto fell five stories from the abandoned building at Emory’s Briarcliff campus, at 1256 Briarcliff Road, early Friday morning.
DeKalb County police reportedly said the incident happened a little before 1 a.m., after Palmirotto and a group scaled a chain-linked fence surrounding the building. First responders pronounced Palmirotto dead at the scene.
The building is known as one of the filming locations for the hit series, “Stranger Things.” It was the site for the fictional Hawkins National Laboratory in the show.
“Going to these places are dangerous, being with people that you really don’t know, like we just kind of always had something in the back of our mind that something could happen,” her father, Todd Palmirotto Jr., said.
Atlanta’s 11Alive News reports that in 2022, officials said the building, known as “Building A,” would be torn down to make room for an assisted living facility, but it never happened.
Building A had once been the home to the Georgia Mental Health Institute psychiatric hospital, according to WTOC 11. In the 1990s, Emory University bought the structure and, in 2024, vacated it.
The building was one of 40 structures that the school had reportedly rented out to filmmakers.
An investigation remains active, according to police.
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe fundraiser has been set up to help the family with funeral and burial expenses.
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[Feature Photo via GoFundMe]
