Local man dies from injuries suffered in fall at mall

By Jennifer Eisenbart

Editor

A 21-year-old man with ties to Silver Lake and Westosha Central High School died Jan. 21, nine days after falling over a second-floor railing at a Milwaukee area shopping mall.

Dustin Strzelecki, who graduated in 2012 from Westosha and had grown up in the Silver Lake area, died at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa from injuries suffered in a fall at Bayshore Town Center Jan. 12. According to witness reports, Strzelecki had tried to slide down a stair rail after an evening out with friends.

The Milwaukee County Coroner’s Office confirmed the death, and the fact there would be no autopsy.

“He made a decision to do something fun and silly,” his mother, Julia Strzelecki, said Tuesday. “Unfortunately, what happened was the fall. He lost his life because of it.”

She also said that there are plans to start a memorial in Dustin’s name.

“We’re trying to figure out what kind of memorial we can do that can carry on his name, and the amazing individual he was,” she said.

Julia Strzelecki called her son driven. The junior engineering student at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee pushed himself hard, she explained.

“He was very driven,” she said. “He was very self driven, and he never settled for any less than perfection. He was hard on himself in ways that none of us could be harder on him.”

Julia Strzelecki started a GoFundMe page last week to help defray the costs of her son’s hospitalization. He was expected to face a long recovery.

She continued to provide updates to the site, including one explaining his condition had been downgraded to “very critical” shortly before his death. Dustin had developed pneumonia, according to her posts.

She thanked family and friends, as well as strangers, who had come to her and her son’s aid.


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