Kavan Markwood wakes up in pain every day and has no feeling in two of his fingers.
Still, the 20-year-old McKeesport, Pa., resident knows it could be much worse.
“I don’t know how I’m alive,” Markwood told “Inside Edition” this week, more than four months after he fell 21 feet from the stands to the field at PNC Park in Pittsburgh during a game between the Pirates and Chicago Cubs.
Video footage from the April 30 game shows Markwood falling headfirst over the railing above the Clemente Wall in right field. He appears to flip head over heals multiple times before landing on the warning track.
Play was stopped for several minutes as the training staffs for both teams tended to Markwood. He eventually was carted off and taken to Allegheny General Hospital in critical condition. According to “Inside Edition,” Markwood broke his back, neck, every rib and punctured a lung.
“I’m doing better than what I was, that’s for sure,” said Markwood, who was shown during the interview walking around outside PNC Park wearing a cast on his left forearm.
Markwood told “Inside Edition” that he had jumped out of his seat to cheer and came down awkwardly on the railing and careened off of it. Although Pittsburgh Public Safety has labeled the incident an accident, 21-year-old McKeesport resident Ethan Kirkwood has been arrested for allegedly providing alcohol to Markwood at the game.
Kirkwood faces two misdemeanor counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Sept. 29. A police report viewed by WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh indicates that Markwood’s girlfriend told police that he hadn’t had anything to drink before arriving to the stadium and had two beers while there.
“I feel terrible because it wasn’t his fault,” Markwood said of Kirkwood, who can be seen on the footage from the accident climbing over the railing from a section closer to field level and jumping onto the ground to help his friend.
Markwood added that alcohol had nothing to do with what happened. It was, he said, “a tragic accident.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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