Recent North Allegheny Grad Dies After Fall at College House Party

Emma Munson, 19, of McCandless, died sometime late Saturday or early Sunday after falling and hitting her head at a house party in the Fan District campus of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.

Munson was a 2013 graduate of North Allegheny High School, the district confirmed.

Munson, a freshman in the art foundation program, was reportedly drinking at a party with friends at 11 S. Morris Street on Saturday night, the Commonwealth Times reported. 

Around 11:40 p.m., Munson fell backwards down a flight of stairs, hit her head and was knocked unconscious, the paper reported.

Matt Simpson, a Richmond resident who witnessed her fall, told the Commonwealth Times he tried to perform CPR until paramedics arrived a few minutes later.

She was rushed to VCU Medical Center where she died.

Grace Whiteside, a close friend of Munson’s, attended the party. Although Munson had been drinking, Whiteside said her friend was not visibly intoxicated at the time of the fall.

“We had been drinking a little bit but it wasn’t to any extent that we couldn’t control the situation,” she told the paper.

Munson turned 19 on Sept. 25 and friends said she planned to major in glassblowing or art therapy after finishing the art foundation program at VCU.

Just last year, she earned a national gold medal in the 2012 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards program for her acrylic painting "The Room," according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.