Charges Dismissed in Parsons Student’s Fatal Fall

Last week a Manhattan judge dismissed all charges against Ilan Nassimi, the real estate broker accused of serving alcohol to 17-year-old Nicole John, an incoming Parsons student who died after falling from Nassimi's 25th floor apartment last August. Nassimi was arrested on August 27 and charged with providing alcohol to minors.

According to the New York Times, prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said they failed to find sufficient evidence to prove that Nassimi, 25, provided John with alcohol. Before arriving at Nassimi's Herald Square apartment, John, daughter of the then-U.S. ambassador to Thailand, had been drinking at Tenjune, a club in the Meatpacking District. Earlier reports described John as having a pair of fake IDs, one of which she used to get into the club.

"The dismissal confirmed exactly what we had been saying all along," Evan Lipton, Nassimi's lawyer, told the Associated Press. "They never had any evidence that she had been drinking in his apartment."

Nassimi's name appeared widely in press reports last summer after John was discovered unconscious on the third floor landing of his building around 4 a.m. on August 27. She had taken off her shoes before stepping out onto the window ledge with her digital camera, apparently to take a photograph. John lost her balance and fell 22 stories. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

In the immediate aftermath, the media speculated about John's partying and Nassimi's possible role in her death. According to John's blog, she was a frequent drinker and abused prescription drugs for recreational purposes. She had met Nassimi at Tenjune on the night of her death and went to his apartment with about a dozen people. Only days before her death John had moved into The New School's Stuyvesant Park residence hall.