A horrific accident in India killed a Chicago area tech CEO and seriously injured the company’s president, and the whole thing was caught on video.
What was designed to be a celebration of success turned tragic when CEO Sanjay Shah, 56, and the company president, Raju Datla, 52, fell 15 feet in front of a packed audience at a party for employees of Vistex, a software company based in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
One of the highlights was an aerial show. A specially designed stage made of wood was elevated 20 feet above the concrete stage using a crane. Shah and Datla were in an iron cage.
They were supposed to be lowered, but the iron chain supporting the cage broke on one side, causing them to fall 15 feet onto the main stage.
That happened in real life to a friend of mine who used to work in a high rise. This was back in the early 90s and they were in an insurance office, where the central elevator opened right into the cube farm: if you could get into the building, you were free to go anywhere that did not have secondary security, and this place didn’t. Additionally, the elevator doors opened to a clear path to floor to ceiling windows, which was a great view if your desk happened to be facing that way.
So one day my friend and their coworkers are all working at their desks on the 26th floor or whatever it was, and with no warning at all some guy gets off the elevator, goes running as fast as he can across the floor to the window and launches himself at the window, only to bounce off and land on his ass on the carpet. Without a word he then got up and did it two more times with all his might before he figured out the glass wasn’t going to break, and then just walked back to the elevator and left.
It all happened so quickly no one had any time to react, and they never found out who he was. But while it was an older building, built in the 60s, all the glass had already been replaced years before to prevent just that. He was denied before he ever even got there, poor guy.