Lawyer fell out of skyscraper window to his death while trying to prove it was unbreakable
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: Findagrave/Public Domain/George Pachantouris/Getty Images
A lawyer who was determined to prove that a 24th-storey window was unbreakable tragically lost his life after falling out of it.
At 38 years old, Garry Hoy had made a name for himself as a well-respected lawyer at the Toronto law firm, Holden Day Wilson.
After obtaining a degree in engineering Hoy began to specialize in building safety and compliance, and he found particular interest in the subject of modern building techniques, and exactly how robust they were.
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By July 1993, Hoy had become particularly fascinated with the windows on the 24th floor of his office building - particularly the strength of the windows looking out over the city.
The lawyer was so enamoured with the windows that he began to throw himself at the glass to prove just how strong they were, and for a while the windows were able to support his point.
However, on July 9, 1993, that support eventually gave way.
The incident took place as Hoy's firm threw a welcome party in their conference room for their new intake of interns for the summer.
With a room full of people, Hoy took his chance to show off the sturdiness of the windows and, as he'd done countless times before, he threw his full weight against the glass to demonstrate its unbreakable structural design and safety.
The first time he performed the trick, everything went as planned. But the second time, he didn't bounce back like he had before.
Instead, to the horror of the interns and other onlookers from the firm, the pane popped out of the frame, and Hoy went along with it.
The lawyer fell 24 floors, and tragically died as he hit the pavement below.
Speaking about the incident to the Toronto Star later, a structural engineer said: “I don’t know of any building code in the world that would allow a 160-pound man to run up against a glass window and withstand it."
Hoy's death was classified as 'accidental auto-defenestration' - which is the act of causing yourself to fall out of a window.
The lawyer was remembered by his peers as one of the 'one of the best and brightest' at the firm, and that point was backed by the fact that Hoy wasn't actually wrong about the windows at the firm.
The thing is, the glass didn't actually break upon impact - it was actually the frame that gave way and ultimately led to Hoy's untimely death.