Connor Cummings, a 20-year-old college student from Rockaway, New Jersey, died Wednesday night after falling while taking photographs with a friend at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

Police said Cummings and his 18-year-old friend, Dimitri Olivares, were carrying photography equipment and trying to capture views of the city from the 52-story hotel. Neither was a guest. The pair reportedly took an elevator and stairs to a restricted rooftop area containing mechanical equipment, catwalks and ladders.

The accounts differ on the circumstances and distance of the fall. One report said Cummings fell nine stories through an interior shaft while descending scaffolding that was wet from rain. Another, citing police sources, said he stepped off a metal catwalk while walking backward and fell about 25 feet onto the hotel roof. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police questioned Olivares and released him without charges. One account said he initially left the hotel in a taxi, then returned and contacted security. Hotel officials said they were cooperating with the investigation and offered condolences to Cummings’s family.

Cummings was a graduate of Morris Knolls High School and a sophomore psychology major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He had taken photography courses and held a leadership role in the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. His relatives and friends remembered his passion for photography and described him as a caring young man. His aunt said the family was seeking answers about what happened and disputed the characterization of him as a daredevil.