Thursday, May 01, 2025

A disturbing public occurrence on a lonely field beyond Fort Pitt

A "Pirates" fan fell, perhaps jumped, from the 21-foot high Clemente Wall in right field and landed on his head on the warning track during a Pittsburgh game-winning play. He is in critical condition in hospital. The evidence as reported by other fans in right field is that he was celebrating the play and lost his balance, and fell. I will not show the video. I will however show stills from the only video that is available to my knowledge. I show these stills for investigative purposes only. For they do not show a garden variety fall to my eye, that is one where a person loses his balance, tries to regain balance, wobbles, and falls. Instead what I see is a fan, unique among his fellow fans, who jumps up from his seat as if ejected, attempts to stand on the guardrail and then appears to lose all bodily control and tumbles end over end, two complete bodily revolutions before landing on his head. There was no attempt to break his fall. The man is circled in white in these photos.

         On his seat, elbows on railing

Standing up, hands on railing. A normal excited fan pose.

But now, what is he doing? He is, to my eyes, beginning to climb on top of the railing. 

He appears to have his right leg elevated preparatory to standing on the railing.



Right leg, clearly to me, up on the railing.
He begins to fall/jump/dive feet over head.

Of course I believe that the unfortunate man fell accidentally. There is no testimonial evidence nor morive that I am aware of for a deliberate jump.  But I am also confronted with video of the incident, and on the video alone I, personally at least, see an intentional jump as likely as an accidental fall. A tragedy no matter how it occurred.