A man was taken to the hospital in serious but stable condition after witnesses said he fell from the rooftop bar at Harpos in downtown Columbia on Sunday night. Columbia Police had the intersection of 10th and Walnut Street outside the bar temporarily blocked off while officers responded.
The search for answers began because the scene changed fast. Police were called to the area at 9:05 p.m., and by 9:15 p.m. bar patrons had been cleared out of the building as officers used crime scene tape to block the intersection. By around 10 p.m., the tape was gone, but the question of how the man went over the railing was still open.
Olivia told a reporter from ABC 17 News that she saw a younger man sitting on the rooftop railing when he leaned back and fell over. That account matched the urgency of the police response, but not the public explanation from Columbia Police spokesman Brian McNeil, who said officers were called to assist in a medical response.
That gap matters because it leaves two versions of the same night sitting side by side: a witness describing a fall from the bar and police describing a medical call. What is clear is that the man was rushed to the hospital, the downtown intersection was shut down for a short time, and by the end of the night the scene had been cleared without a public explanation of what caused the fall.
