The owners of a home where a Kansas University freshman suffered a debilitating fall in 2004 should have known it was a dangerous “party house” where underage drinking was commonplace, a new lawsuit claims.

The family of Sara Anne Driessel – who is still unable to walk and talk from injuries she sustained in the fall – filed suit last week in Douglas County District Court against David K. Jones and Misti L. Jones, of Lake Quivira, owners of the home at 1045 Tenn. The suit also names the Jones’ son, Kyle, who lived at the home, and alleges that he hosted a party involving underage drinking the night of Driessel’s fall.

Driessel, an 18-year-old freshman at the time, is one of at least four young people who have been injured or killed in recent years in falls on or near the KU campus.

Police said Driessel had gone outside onto a second-floor walkout roof of the home to smoke a cigarette early on the morning of Oct. 24, 2004. She was air-lifted to University of Kansas Hospital with “permanent and severe injuries that will cause her physical pain, prevent her from working, and will require ongoing medical care and treatment throughout the rest of her life,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, which seeks an unspecified amount of damages, alleges the roof was not up to building codes and that Jones’ family was negligent by failing to place a railing around it or seal the door that led to it. It also claims that David and Misti Jones should have known that their son “had demonstrated propensity for underage drinking, partying and other irresponsible behavior” and that the home had become “a dangerous ‘Party House,’ at which underage drinking and other raucous activity was commonplace.”

The suit was filed by Sara Driessel through her mother, Beth Driessel. The Jones family and Driessel’s attorney did not return phone calls Wednesday seeking comment.

Other recent falls on or near campus:

¢ Eric Wellhausen, a freshman from Mount Prospect, Ill., died in September 2003 after falling from a window ledge outside his seventh-floor dormitory room in Oliver Hall. His parents filed suit against KU in 2005 in federal court, but the suit was recently dismissed and is likely to be litigated in state court instead.

The Wellhausens say KU officials knew students were regularly going out on the ledges and didn’t do enough to prevent it. But a KU attorney recently wrote that the school “owed no duty to protect decedent Eric Wellhausen from the open and obvious danger of falling as a result of climbing out a seventh-floor window onto a narrow ledge while legally drunk.”

¢ Graham Carruthers, A 19-year-old KU student, was injured early on the morning of April 16 this year after falling from a window at Carson Place apartments, 1121 La. A 22-year-old female acquaintance was suspected of giving him alcohol. At the time, Lawrence Police said they forwarded a copy of the report to Dist. Atty. Charles Branson’s office for possible charges, but Branson said in mid-May that his office never got the report.

¢ A 21-year-old woman was flown to the hospital early May 10 after she fell while trying to climb up to the second-story balcony of an apartment in the 1000 block of Missouri Street. Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical did not release her name, citing medical privacy laws.