A Strange If Not Suspicious Death

     Brooke Baures, a 21-year-old social work major at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota, worked part time across the Mississippi River at WingDam Saloon & Grill in Fountain City, Wisconsin. From 2011 to 2014, the native of Chetek, Wisconsin excelled as a member of the university's gymnastics team. As a bar and beam gymnast, the senior competed three times at national gymnastic events and was named an All-American gymnast three years in a row.

     At the restaurant and bar in Fountain City one of Baures' jobs involved taking food and drinks from the dumbwaiter that ran between the first floor kitchen and the second floor eating and drinking area. The opening to the food elevator measured three feet wide and three feet tall. This opening was not designed for human access.

     At eight in the evening of Monday December 1, 2014 the Buffalo County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call regarding a young woman stuck or trapped in the shaft of a restaurant food elevator. The victim turned out to be Brooke Baures. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.

     Law enforcement authorities quickly ruled out foul play in the strange death. (Since 2003 only two people in the U.S. had died in food elevator accidents.) The no-foul-play announcement, before autopsy and toxicological results, seemed premature.

     After questioning half of the customers and all of the restaurant employees investigators did not find an eyewitness to the incident. Apparently nobody saw Baures enter the food elevator shaft. Fountain City Police Chief Jason Mark told reporters that, "I highly doubt that Baures was using the dumbwaiter to move herself." He said she was probably using the elevator to shuttle food and drink.

     Eliminating the possibility of foul play before a thorough death investigation was self-defeating and amateurish. Moreover, it produced a lot of questions and raised suspicion of a cover-up. For example, who discovered Baures and how long had she been dead? What was the position of her body and exactly how did she die? How could this have happened? Are dumbwaiters that dangerous?

     On December 6, 2014 Buffalo County Sheriff Mike Schmidtknecht told reporters that Baures' death was probably a freak accident. He said investigators believe she possibly pushed the down button then noticed something and reached in and got caught and was dragged down into the shaft by the elevator. 

     The authorities on December 9, 2014 released the results of Baures' autopsy. According to the report the cause of death was "extensive destruction of the brainstem and the left side of the cerebellum." Manner of death: accident.

What Happened to Shane Montgomery?

     In November 2014, 21-year-old Shane Montgomery, a catholic high school graduate from the Roxborough section of Philadelphia was a senior at nearby West Chester University. On Wednesday night November 26, 2014 Montgomery, his cousin and a couple of friends were barhopping in Philadelphia.

     In the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day Montgomery and his group were drinking at Kildare's Irish Pub on Main Street in Philadelphia's Manayunk neighborhood. At some point Montgomery got separated from his friends in the crowded bar. At 1:45 AM he accidentally bumped into the DJ's table. The bouncer ordered the student out of the pub. Montgomery apologized and left the premises.

     After he was seen leaving the bar, Shane Montgomery did not return home. Friends and family were unable to get in touch with him by phone and he didn't show up for Thanksgiving dinner. Concerned, his family filed a missing persons report with the Philadelphia Police Department.

     On Friday November 28, 2014, volunteers circulated missing persons notices around the Manayunk neighborhood. The posters featured a photograph of the missing college student along with a picture of the Celtic cross tattooed across his shoulder blades. The 5-foot-11 inch 140-pound Montgomery, when he left the bar, was dressed in jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt.

     The search for Shane Montgomery included the use of dogs, a helicopter and boats on the Schuylkill River that flows alongside Manayunk's Main Street. Five-hundred volunteers searched the riverbank, the footpath and the railroad tracks that run parallel to the street.

     A cellphone tower in Lower Merion Township picked up a signal from Montgomery's cellphone a little less than an hour after he left Kildare's. The phone itself was not recovered. At the bar there was no video surveillance footage for detectives to review.

     On Sunday November 30, 2014, a FBI task force joined in the hunt for the missing student. A $10,000 reward was posted for information leading to his whereabouts.

     Shortly after noon on Saturday January 4, 2015, a volunteer diver from the Garden State (New Jersey) Underwater Recovery Unit found Shane Montgomery's body in three feet of water near the Schuylkill riverbank not far from the Manayunk bar where he was last seen. Two weeks earlier a diver from the same unit found Montgomery's car keys in the water near the river bank 800 yards upriver from where his body was recovered.

     Shane Montgomery's uncle, on January 5, 2015, told reporters that the medical examiner's office had completed its autopsy and had ruled the young man's drowning death an accident.

     In March 2019, a jury sitting in Philadelphia found that the Kildare Irish Pub owner had to pay $525,000 in damages to the family of Shane Montgomery for serving the student alcohol after the student was manifestly intoxicated.

Living With The Dead

     A 94-year-old woman's body may have been in her upstate New York apartment for more than a year before being discovered, despite her daughter living just above her. Police and prosecutors in Fulton County told local reporters that Hope Ruller may have died in her first-floor apartment in Gloversville, New York as long as 14 months before being discovered December 29, 2014 after police received a request from a relative to check on her welfare…

     Officials say the dead woman's daughter lived in the two-story home's upstairs apartment with an adult son…An autopsy was conducted but a cause of death couldn't be determined because of the body's severely decomposed condition. Police say Ruller's death is being treated as suspicious. No arrests have been made….[In May 2015, police arrested Hope Ruller's 60-year-old daughter Mary Kersting on the charge of grand larceny for collecting $13,000 from her dead mother's social security account. Five months later, after pleading guilty, the judge sentenced her to six months in jail.]

"Police: 94-Year-Old Woman Found Dead May Have Died in 2013," Associated Press, January 7, 2015