Woman who fled police dies after falling from highrise balcony

The 22-year-old Richmond woman who plunged four storeys from a high-rise apartment balcony Wednesday night died in hospital Thursday evening.

Samantha Dawn Sczerkowsky suffered massive head and internal injuries during the head-first fall and had been listed in critical condition.

Her father, who answered the phone from the family's Saunders Road home, told The Richmond Review Friday morning that she had died, but declined to comment further.

Sczerkowsky and two men fled when police tried to execute a fraud-related search warrant in the fifth-floor apartment in the northernmost of four Centre Pointe towers adjacent to Kwantlen Polytechnic University on Lansdowne Road.

"She's a great kid. I know she was not in any legal trouble...I know she wasn't using drugs or anything," said Carmen, a co-worker from J Malone's Pub at Blundell and Garden City roads, where Sczerkowsky has worked as a waitress for the past six months.

Sczerkowsky was a former student at Hugh McRoberts secondary and just celebrated her 22nd birthday last month, according to a profile she posted on the social networking website imeem.

The incident occurred around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday when Richmond Mounties, armed with a search warrant, knocked on the door of the fifth-floor apartment which had been rented out by its owner from Nanaimo.

That's when Sczerkowsky and two men, who are well-known to police, tried to escape the apartment via a west-facing balcony, as an officer stationed outside watched.

That officer recognized the two men, called out to them by name and ordered them to stop, but they didn't.

Richmond RCMP Cpl. Nycki Basra said the woman fell as the trio were climbing down the outside of the building, working their way from balcony to balcony.

The woman was making her way to the fourth floor when she slipped and fell to the ground. The two men made it to a third-floor balcony, forced their way into a unit and were last seen running out of the building from a third-storey parkade exit.

Mounties suspended the search of the apartment while officers focussed on providing first aid to the woman, who was taken to hospital in critical condition.

Sczerkowsky fell onto a patch of ground covered in a layer of thumb-sized rounded stone.

Basra said the two male suspects are in their 20s, but police won't be releasing their names or photos until they obtain a search warrant from the courts.

Nanaimo's Gurdev Sadhra owns the unit at the focus of the police investigation.

"I saw that on TV (Wednesday) during the news, but I didn't think it was my unit. I learned that this morning," Sadhra told The Richmond Thursday. "It's amazing. I can't believe how they got down from the fifth floor."

Sadhra said he's not aware who was living in the unit, which his son rented out. Sadhra's son declined to comment.

Police told Sadhra that the investigation is fraud related, and that it doesn't involve a marijuana grow-op, news which came as a relief to Sadhra.

But he's still got to worry about the damage to the front door, presumably caused when police entered the unit.

Anyone with information about what happened on Wednesday night is asked to call the Richmond RCMP at 604-278-1212 or leave an anonymous tip by calling CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.