Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisV
Just did some further reading. The elevator likely behaved the way it did because she pushed the "Door Hold" button at the bottom. She had bipolar and may have been manic or psychotic. The water tank wasn't "sealed", just had a (relatively heavy, it is true) lid on it. I'd say after she couldn't get the elevator to go, she went up all the fire escape stairs to the roof, was in a huge state of confusion, and tried to hide inside the water tank. IDK why the video was edited but probably just to remove like a minute of footage where nothing happened.
Ah, yeah, you are right. I wrote my post from memory. For further reference:
The investigation had determined how Lam died, but did not offer an explanation as to how she got into the tank in the first place. Doors and stairs that access the hotel's roof are locked, with only staff having the passcodes and keys, and any attempt to force them would supposedly have triggered an alarm. However, the hotel's fire escape could have allowed her to bypass those security measures, if she (or someone who might have accompanied her there) had known.
Apart from the question of how she got on the roof, others asked if she could have gotten into the tank by herself. All four tanks are 4-by-8-foot (1.2 by 2.4 m) cylinders propped up on concrete blocks; there is no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to look at the water. They are protected by heavy lids that would be difficult to replace from within.
Just super strange.
I'm also trying to think of what that area was like in 2013. Downtown LA went through a fast and massive upheaval around those years, but I know the Cecil was a pretty ****ty hotel, and the neighborhood, while changing, is still quite rough. During that time, the hotel was a week-to-week rental property, mixing backpackers with the local druggies. There was more than one story of craziness and the Cecil was, more often than not, the epicenter. The hotel was wide-open with no real security to speak of, which made is different than other weekly hotels, which made the Cecil worse because it is on the corner of 7th Street and Main, an area that is dangerous during broad daylight. I'm a little lost on the details, but I either LA banned the short-term rentals or short-term rentals simply stopped in the entire area.
When we talk about LA Skid Row, we aren't talking about a group of homeless people chatting passerbys and passively begging for change. We are talking about the worst of the worst, a place where prisons and mental institutions dropped off the just-released, and the Crips had a strangle-hold on the area until only a few years ago. It was a seriously dangerous place, and still is in many ways. 7th and Main wasn't a place I'd voluntarily go to that often.
source: lived in downtown LA for quite a few years.
