A Connecticut father of two fell 150 feet to his death from an elevated seating section at Madison Square Garden Saturday night, and the only question the establishment press bothered to ask was what band was playing. Paul Kueker, 51, of Niantic, was at the arena with his wife for a Goose concert when he plummeted from the Chase Bridge around 9:51 p.m. — the day before Father's Day. He was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital. Police say no foul play. Case closed, apparently.
Here is what matters: a man went to a concert in one of the most famous venues in the country and ended up dead from a fall that should not be physically possible if basic safety infrastructure functioned as advertised. The Chase Bridge, an elevated seating section added to MSG in a 2013 renovation, hangs over the arena floor. How does a patron simply fall 150 feet from a structure designed to hold hundreds of people? Nobody in authority is saying. Nobody in the press is pressing them.
The New York Post, which identified Kueker by name and reported the 150-foot figure, was the only outlet to treat this man as a person rather than a data point. His mother, Patricia Finelli, told the Post through tears:
