LEXINGTON, Ky. - A Kentucky woman who was in critical condition Sunday after falling from a 10th-floor Atlanta hotel window is doing "better than anticipated," a family member says, but relatives remain puzzled about what led to the fall.
LaRhonda Hill told The Lexington Herald-Leader that her cousin, 25-year-old Ciara Williams, was aware of what was happening around her Sunday, a day after surviving the fall from the W Atlanta-Midtown hotel.
"After she saw her mother, I think it helped her even more," Hill said. "When you tell her who all is here, she kind of nods her head like 'good'."
Witnesses told police that 30-year-old LaShawna Threatt and a second woman were "play wrestling" in a room at the hotel around 3:15 a.m. when they crashed through a window and fell four or five stories onto a slanted glass ceiling above a sunroom.
Rescuers found Threatt, the mother of a 15-year-old daughter, dead on the sunroom roof. Police did not immediately confirm the identity of the second woman, and Atlanta police did not respond to phone calls Sunday from the Associated Press. But family members and friends said it was Williams.
The second woman tumbled off that same roof and fell onto an outdoor patio outside the hotel. She was taken to Grady Hospital with multiple broken bones and other injuries and listed in critical condition Sunday evening. Friends say Threatt was the best friend of the injured woman.
Hill said some in attendance reported the women were leaning on the window when it gave way.
"Everyone was pretty much on the same page - that it was an accident," said Hill, who was among the family members gathered Sunday at the Atlanta hospital where Williams was being treated.
Dallas Wright, who has known Williams since the two attended Bryan Station High School in Lexington, said Williams was moving. Wright called her a fighter.
"She's very responsive. She's able to mouth words," Wright said. "She's asking questions. She's opening her eyes."