Chicago woman Sarah Bean, 34 killed by Gargoyle

A MOTHER was killed when pieces of a stone gargoyle fell from a historic Chicago church and struck her.

Sarah Bean, 34, was standing on the footpath with her fiance when a metal chunk broke off the Second Presbyterian Church’s tower, clipping a gargoyle’s head on the way down about midday on Thursday (3am Friday AEST).

The mother-of-two was fatally hit in the head with the falling debris as her fiance, Lance Johnson, screamed with despair.

“I saw that crack on her head and thought, ‘She’s definitely dead’,” witness Broderick Adams told Chicago Tribune.

Bean, known to friends as ‘Sarah Smile’, was scheduled to work in the paediatric intensive care unit at Lurie Children’s Hospital later that night.

Scene ... Sarah Bean died when hit by chunk of gargoyle which fell off Second Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Picture: Googlemaps Source: Supplied

She and longtime partner Johnson had two sons together, aged 10 and 14, and lived just streets away from the church. They were soon to be married.

“She was a beautiful person,” Bean’s grief-stricken brother, Michael Willis, told Chicago Tribune.

“This is not good. This is not something you expect at all.”

The church, built in 1874, was named a city landmark in 1977 and a National Historic Landmark in 2013.

NBC Chicago reported that records show the church failed a series of inspections from 2007 to 2011.

In 2011, the church was cited for five violations, including failing to “maintain the exterior walls of the building or structure free from holes, breaks, loose or rotting boards or timbers and any other condition which might admit rain or dampness to the walls,” records show.