Sports Fan Plummets to His Death After Trying to Catch Ball
At the Texas Rangers game yesterday in Arlington, Texas, a fan fell about 20 feet head-first to his death trying to catch a ball.
The tragedy happened when 39 year-old Shannon Stone was watching the game with his young son. Ranger’s left fielder Josh Hamilton tossed a foul ball into the stands during the second inning which Stone tried to catch, but in the excitement he lost his balance and fell over the edge of the stand.
“I tried to grab him, but I couldn’t,” Ronnie Hargis, who was sitting next to the Stone in the stand, told Dallas Morning News, “I tried to slow him down a little bit. He went straight down.”
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Stone was a lieutenant from Brownwood, Texas which is about 150 miles from Arlington. He was a firefighter with the Brownwood Fire Department for nearly 18 years.
The fan fell onto concrete behind the opposing team scoreboard. Relief players were able to see Stone conscious right after the fall.
Player Brad Ziegler was in tears after the incident: “When they had him on a stretcher and they were carrying him out, he was saying stuff like ‘Please check on my son, he’s left up there by himself.’”
Ziegler told reporters. “The people that carried him out reassured him that, ‘We’ll get your son, we’ll make sure he’s OK.’ We just kind of assumed that he’s talking, he’s conscious, he’ll be OK. To find out he’s not is just … tough.”
Both the Texas Rangers and their opponents the Oakland Athletics have expressed their grief at the accident. In particular, Josh Hamilton, the player who tossed the ball into the stands, is reported as being “very distraught”.
Rangers president Nolan Ryan released a statement saying: “We had a very tragic accident tonight and one of our fans lost his life reaching over the wall trying to catch a ball.
“As an organization and as team members and as a staff, we are heavy-hearted about this, and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.”
