OPINION: A clarification, and an apology
This is part clarification, part explanation, and part apology.
As you are probably aware, a young man died after falling out of a second-story window at the Sigma Chi fraternity house last weekend. Jack Fleischaker, 19, a member of the fraternity, suffered what turned out to be fatal injuries in the incident, which occurred at about 3 a.m. Saturday.
No authorities said anything about the incident over the weekend; we at The Mercury learned about it by way of questions that some of our readers began asking us mid-day Monday. We of course inquired of the police, the hospital, the fraternity, members of the fraternity alumni board, university officials, and both parents and current students at the university. Nobody was able to officially say anything other than the police confirming that there had been an incident at that time and that place, and that a person was transferred by EMS to the local hospital.
By Monday evening, we were stuck at that point, but several of our sources - both official and unofficial - had told us of the young man's name, and that he had indeed died. We were confident enough in that information to publish a story on our website reporting that, attributing or information to sources whom we did not name.
Well, shortly after that, people close to the young man's family - they're from Overland Park - told us that he had not died yet, and that we should either delete or correct our story and apologize for our error.
We were able to confirm that those people were in position to know real information, and so we updated our story immediately to reflect that he was in critical condition. They have now told us that he died mid-day Tuesday, and so we are publishing another news account. I would assume that there will be further information coming from official sources now, given the change in circumstances. Perhaps by the time you're reading this, that will already be the case.
Reporting that somebody had died when in fact they hadn't is a journalistic nightmare, aside from the far more important issue of spreading bad information that's emotionally harmful to the family and friends. We all truly regret having made that mistake, and we vow to do what we can to improve. We also have apologized to the family, and - if you read my column here - emphasized empathy for them. That was my first personal reaction anyway.
Not to excuse that error, but just for your consideration, I would note that we were dealing with a days-old information vacuum on an extremely important news event, and we worked awfully hard at confirmation. Turned out to be not hard enough, and - in the end - that's my fault.
We get an awful lot right, and we win awards for our journalism. But we occasionally get some things wrong. We don't hide from those things - we let you know about them, and we take accountability. We correct our errors, and we try to improve every way. That's what we'll do here.
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.
This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 5:20 PM.