Bizarre Death Ruled “Not a Homicide” Despite Questions

Brooke Baures – the waitress who was killed in a bizarre dumb-waiter accident in a Wisconsin restaurant – was not a victim of a homicide, according to the autopsy report released today by Fountain City Police Chief Jason Mork.  Despite original reports indicating that Baures body was found “entirely inside” the dumb-waiter at  the Wingdam Saloon and Grill in Fountain City, the autopsy report indicates that Ms. Baures was killed when her head got caught in the dumb-waiter as it started its descent to the lower floor of the restaurant from the banquet hall on the second floor.  Buffalo County Sheriff Mike Schmidtknecht said that the death was probably the result of a freak accident. In a follow-up report, Chief Mork indicated that “To explain more of her specific location, orientation or obvious injuries would require an extremely graphic explanation,” according to the Winona Daily News.

The official autopsy report was augmented by the assertion that it would have been impossible for anyone else to have pressed the control button activating the dumb-waiter from the second floor, dispelling questions about whether foul play was involved. While food service dumb-waiter have previously been known for severing the hands of incautious operators, this may be the first time anyone has been killed by one of these devices, which are commonly founded in multi-floored food service facilities.

The official scenario, nevertheless, raises other questions about whether the necessary safety devices were installed on the dumb-waiter. Modern dumb-waiter are required to have the same safety features as passenger elevators, including locking doors which prevent anyone from gaining access to the elevator shaft unless the elevator cab  was at that level.  Food service professionals familiar with this equipment have suggested that some employees routinely disable those security functions and occasionally stick their heads into the elevator shaft to shout instructions between the kitchen and the service levels, offering one of  the possible scenarios under which this accident could have occurred.

dumb-waiter have been used in the United States since the 1840s. The first mechanical dumb-waiter was patented by George W. Cannon in 1887, and there are reports dating back to 1915 indicating the common practice of shouting up into the elevator shaft to place kitchen orders or to tell wait staff that their ordered had arrived.  In the 1950s, dumb-waiter were still found in some New York City  apartment buildings, where they were used to collect refuse before being replaced by garbage chutes.

The tragic death of the 21 year-old college senior has spawned both state and federal investigations into the safety issues surrounding the use of kitchen dumb-waiter, but there are still some unanswered questions about Ms. Baures death that merit further discussion.  Investigators have reported that there was no way that anyone else could have activated the dumb-waiter, but that is a highly speculative conclusion. There were no immediate reports indicating that there were any eyewitnesses, and no one has since come forward claiming to have witnessed the event.  In the absence of any corroborating testimony, investigators can not be absolutely certain that Baures was alone at the time of the accident.

Assuming no foul play was involved, someone still has to answer the question of why anyone would put his or her head into a dumb-waiter and then press the “call” button, leading to questions about whether it might have been possible for the victim to have accidentally pressed the call button while her head was in the elevator cab. People familiar with this equipment have told reporters that there was no reason that restaurant employees would ever put their heads into the elevator cab. Others have suggested that she might have pressed the call button, seen something that she wanted to remove from the dumb-waiter and reached in to grab it….but that would not explain what her head was doing in the elevator cab.

Another possible scenario suggests that someone might have accidentally pressed the call button on the lower floor while Baures had her head inside the elevator cab, which still begs the question about why her head was in the elevator cab in the first place. The quickly released autopsy report clarified the previous misinformation that the victim was found inside the elevator cab, but the report raises as a many questions as it answers.  In the absence of any eyewitnesses, it was perhaps premature to rule out the possibility of foul play, and the owners of the restaurant still have to explain why the dumb-waiter did not have proper safety equipment installed.  Experienced police reporters are tagging this story with “More to follow” in view of the number of unanswered questions.

dumb-waiter come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  Some, such as the one shown in the stock photo above, are sized to hold a pair of food trays.  Others are large enough to accommodate a food trolley loaded down with several different plates. One of the most common uses of dumb-waiter today are to move food orders from the galley to the passenger compartments on jumbo aircraft.