Connor Cummings, a 20-year-old college student from Rockaway, New Jersey, died after falling at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan late Wednesday. Police said he and an 18-year-old friend had gone to the 52-story hotel to take photographs of the city skyline. Neither was a hotel guest.

The accounts differ on the circumstances of the fall. Two reports say Cummings fell nine stories through an interior shaft while descending scaffolding; one cites police who said the scaffolding was wet from rain. Another, citing police sources, says he stepped off a rooftop catwalk while walking backward and taking photographs, falling about 25 feet. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

His friend, identified in the reports as Dimitri Olivares or Oliveras, was interviewed by police and released without charges. One account says he initially left the hotel by taxi before returning and alerting hotel security. Police recovered photography equipment, and hotel officials said they were cooperating with the investigation.

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 was active in the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. Family and friends described him as a devoted photographer and a caring person. His aunt said he was a photography enthusiast, not a daredevil, and that the family was seeking answers about what happened. His school, fraternity and the hotel expressed condolences.