A Pennsylvania teacher died Monday from injuries she sustained when she accidentally fell off a rooftop balcony while laughing as she sat in a private home during a vacation in Mexico, it was learned on Thursday.
Sharon Regoli Ciferno, 50, a sixth-grade social studies teacher in the Burrell School District in western Pennsylvania, was on holiday with her daughter and two other people in California, according to TribLive.com.
The four then decided to cross the southern border and spend a few days in Mexico.
On August 4, Ciferno was sitting on a rooftop deck at a friend’s house in Mexico along with another mother-daughter pair, her brother, David Regoli, told PennLive.
‘The deck had a ledge that acted as a bench for people to sit on that went around the deck,’ Regoli said.
Sharon Regoli Ciferno, 50, a sixth-grade social studies teacher in the Burrell School District in western Pennsylvania, was on holiday with her daughter and two other people in Mexico when she fell off a rooftop balcony while she was ‘laughing very hard,’ according to her brother
‘Unfortunately, there was no back on the deck.
‘Remember, the building code standards in Mexico are not the same in the states,’ her brother said.
‘She was sitting on the bench when she started laughing very hard and when she put her head back she lost her balance and fell back.
‘She suffered multiple injuries to her body and brain.’
Regoli credited both the Mexican and American emergency services that worked to quickly transport his sister back across the border.
She was hospitalized at the UCSD Medical Center in San Diego, where doctors placed her on a respirator.
She was hospitalized at the UCSD Medical Center in San Diego, where doctors placed her on a respirator. The family made the decision to ‘let her go’ on Monday
‘Her injuries proved to be more than she could handle and the family made the most difficult decision that we could make and we let her go,’ said Regoli, who insists that alcohol played no part in her death.
Sharon Regoli Ciferno hails from a family that is well respected in the community for its dedication to public service.
Her father spent over 25 years as a local government official and state senator.
Both of her brothers – David and John – served 16 years as a city councilman in Lower Burrell.