Chad Wolfe’s Body Found At Bottom Of Tampa Airport Elevator Shaft

I don’t know how much strength it takes to pull *those* elevator doors open, but back in the day, we used to go to the mall, and in Sears they had an elevator that spanned both shopping floors as well as the parking deck under the mall. We used to pull the doors open and screw around in/on the elevator for hours. It was kind of weird to see the doors open on the inside but not the outside, as well as the amount of graffiti and bubble gum in there. Of course we were actually inside the elevator so I don’t know if that is easier to do than from the outside but we were in junior high at best, so all of us would have been under 150 lbs. Sometimes when I look back at all this I wonder how I am still walking on this planet.

Strange story. I don’t know what happened, but i do know that i don’t want to be anywhere near that elevator when it discovers that the snack it had put away for later has mysteriously disappeared.

And being in an airport… there were no surveillance cameras anywhere?

I hope there’s a follow up because this is weird. Maybe surveillance video or something?

You just expect them to work.

Not anymore. Not since I started reading stories here. Paranoid as fuck now.

I can’t imagine that he would get so close to Bike Week in Daytona to turn around and commit suicide. That’s one of those bucket list kind of trips for most people…

That happened years before I got involved with DD. Different story now.

I dunno about this story, one was or another.
I was in an office building that had an older elevator. While I was reading a report, the doors opened; I started in. And then stepped out over open air. The elevator was still on the bottom floor. I guess my instincts kicked in, because I didn’t put any weight on the lead foot.

Chad Wolfe: https://www.facebook.com/chad.wolfe.756

After all the articles about elevator ‘accidents’ on DD, as well as a little bit of my own paranoid fears, I haven’t taken an elevator in close to two years. The place I need to be may be 10 stories up from where I am, but damnit, i’m taking the stairs.

Something in the Metamucil ain’t clean on this one…

I wonder if he went looking for something (bathroom, vending machine for a drink, whatever), and realized he got off at the wrong floor. If I read the details correctly, there were two elevators next to each other. If both elevators hadn’t returned after several minutes he may have grown anxious that his girlfriend wouldn’t know where he was, and maybe he attempted to pry open the doors to see if the elevator was stuck or what the deal was. That would explain how he ended up in the adjacent shaft. (Although, how did they know which elevator he rode up there?)

He would have set his bag down, and probably needed to use some amount of force to pry the doors apart. I could see someone pushing their body weight into the doors while attempting to open them, then falling in once the sensors were tripped, causing the doors to slide open quickly.

We’ve all seen elevator doors start to close, only to immediately open up when an object/person crossed the threshold. Hell, most of us don’t hesitate to stick our hands into the closing doors if someone rushing over says, “Hold the elevator!” because we know they’ll slide back as soon as our hand trips the sensor. So if a person was really trying to get the doors open, they’d only need to get them open a smidgen before they slid open automatically, leaving that person to swan dive forward because they were leaning in & pushing as the doors opened.

I’m also wondering about surveillance video… It’s an AIRPORT, which presumably has security cameras everywhere. An airport is also a great place to get confused and head the wrong direction. Navigating unfamiliar airports gets me turned around or not sure of where I’m going, and I’m typically quite good at following directions and remembering where things go. I like to study maps for fun(!) and I still make mistakes until I’m familiarized with an airport. So the idea of a person taking an elevator to the wrong place isn’t far-fetched to me, especially if that person was tired from traveling, and perhaps slightly impaired from Xanax & alcohol.

Although, one Xanax and one drink hardly sounds like a recipe for being impaired. It sounds like exactly how my husband would deal with anxiety when flying. The only time he had to fly he happily took the Xanax my mother gave him to calm his nerves before the flight. I doubt this poor guy was truly impaired from Xanax & alcohol, unless he had an unexpected reaction to the combination (i.e. never took Xanax & alcohol together before that day, or consumed more than a normal amount).

His girlfriend apparently didn’t think he was too impaired to leave for a few minutes while she got her bag. I think it’s more plausible that traveling led to being very tired, a condition exacerbated by Xanax & alcohol. That combination might well lead to stupid behavior, even in those who are intelligent enough under normal circumstances. And if he was really worn out, she may have said, “You don’t need to walk all the way down there, just chill here for a few minutes while I get my bag.”

I dunno though. That’s just my theory. He might have been straight up murdered for all I know. Although I really hope not; his death was tragic enough.

IKR? I’ve always hated/feared fucking elevators but this site gave me concrete cause to avoid them.

Are you kidding mee… With my cat-like agile reflexes I was up and outta that bitch quick Love me some LMB. I’ll never leave ya babe!

Weird…I wonder why he didn’t go to retrieve his luggage with gf since they had both just flown in….

All except for Heather Habilatory the habitual idiot!

Having flown in to Tampa many times I had to either take the escalator or the elevator to get to the Baggage Claim. His father was renting a car like you said it’s on the Baggage Claim level which is street level so most likely he was retrieving his luggage meeting his father & girlfriend there then the elevator went up to the 7th floor. Haven’t you EVER rode an elevator that before you could react it went up instead of down? Just wondering. Most will stay on board perhaps he left thinking he was on the Baggage Level floor then fell to his death. The surveillance cameras have only video of him staggering around so it’s damage control time. I love TIA night or day it’s not creepy at all. Try LAX at night that’s creepy! Once I was UNDERGROUND in a tunnel then stuck when it was blocked off with only a couple of people alone for a while dark for 30 minutes I started to panic until they allowed us to continue to walk underground for 20 minutes! Not good! Still miss your Tampa Bay after 30+ years living in Flori-DUH It’s All Good!