After the 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand fell to her death from a Midtown building on Friday, attention has been on Tenjune, where she had been partying earlier. The Post reports that the Manhattan DA's office is opening up a criminal probe: "Investigators plan to interview owners, bartenders, cocktail waitresses and bouncers about how Nicole John, 17, was allowed entry to the hotspot with a bogus ID and what she did while inside the club on Little West 12th Street."
John, who had bragged about her fake ID that said she was 23 on her blog, met Ilan Nassini at the club, and he invited her and other club goers back to apartment, where she took her fatal fall. Last night at Tenjune, IDs were being checked, a "leggy 18-year-old aspiring [female] model" told the Daily News, "I always get in here with no ID, and it's no problem. This girl came here last night and got trashed and died - that's why they're being like this." But security wasn't that tight: "She - like several other teen club-hoppers - still managed to gain entry with an ID smuggled outside from a friend already in the club. She waited about 30 minutes before reaching the inner sanctum."
A photograph on John's blog (now removed from Tumblr) shows her at Tenjune holding a champagne flute in the VIP section. The Post's source says, "Potential criminal charges [for Tenjune] could range from a misdemeanor, serving alcohol to a minor, up to the more serious, although unlikely, felony charge of involuntary manslaughter." The club promoter who may have helped John get in is also under scrutiny.
As for John's fatal night, she went to Nassini's 25th floor Herald Square Towers apartment on West 34th Street, where there was more drinking. At some point, John opened a window and crawled onto a ledge, possibly to take a photograph; the teen's body was found on a third floor landing. Nassini, who was charged with serving alcohol to a minor and dealing to a minor, claims he had no idea that John was underage. His neighbors tell the News the luxury rental as having many partiers: "'Something like this was bound to happen,' said resident Kristen Donovan, who described seeing residents and guests having sex in the stairwells."
