Abstract: At approximately 10:30 a.m. on March 21, 2005, Employee #1, a sales representative of a food service distributor, was making a routine sales call to a private elementary school cafeteria. She was carrying 1 or 2 boxes of chips up a flight of stairs to the school cafeteria. The stairs consisted of five risers. The first riser was 9.5-in. high and the top four risers were each 6-in. high. The stairs were approximately 6-ft wide. One side of the stairway had a standard stair railing. The other side of the stairs was open to a height of 33.5-in. She knocked on the screen door leading into the kitchen while holding the boxes and waited for a cafeteria worker to open the outwardly swinging screen door. The cafeteria worker arrived, and began to swing open the screen door. Employee # 1 stepped back to allow the screen door to open and her shoe heel dropped off the top landing. She lost her balance and fell backwards striking the concrete sidewalk below with her head. She died at the hospital the next day.