Atlanta – A fan died after falling from the upper deck into the lower-level stands at Turner Field on Saturday night during a game between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees.
Lt. Charles Hampton of the Atlanta Police Department homicide unit confirmed death hours after the fall in the seventh inning.
Hampton said the man was in his early 60s and was pronounced dead at Grady Memorial Hospital. There was no immediate word on his identity pending notification of his next of kin.
Hampton said police don’t suspect foul play at this point.
The man fell close to the area where players’ wives and families sit, and there was blood was on the concrete surface around the seats.
Stadium medical personnel treated him for about 10 minutes, applying CPR. As they worked in a circle around the man, security officers cleared the area. The fan was taken from the seating area on a backboard.
A fan died at Turner Field on Aug. 12, 2013, after falling 85 feet from a walkway on the fourth level of the stadium. Investigators from the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office later ruled that the death of Ronald Lee Homer Jr., 30, was a suicide.
Police said Homer, of Conyers, Georgia, landed in the players’ parking lot after a rain delay during a game between the Braves and Philadelphia.
Two fans died at major league games in 2011.
In Texas, a man fell about 20 feet to the ground beyond the outfield fence trying to catch a baseball tossed his way by Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton. Shannon Stone, 39 and a firefighter in Brownwood, Texas, was attending the Rangers game with his young son.
Earlier that year, a 27-year-old man died after falling about 20 feet and striking his head on concrete during a Colorado Rockies home game. Witnesses told police the man was trying to slide down a staircase railing at Coors Field and lost his balance.
After Saturday night’s fall, some fans in the family section were escorted to a room near the Braves’ clubhouse, and many were crying.
Braves outfielder Cameron Maybin’s son was crying. A woman went to the Braves dugout and told catcher A.J. Pierzynski about what had occurred.
A security guard at the room where the family members went said witnesses saw the man trying to hang onto a wire that runs from the protective net behind the plate to under the press box. The man then fell the rest of the way into the seats.
The wires and even the net shook for a few seconds immediately after Alex Rodriguez was introduced as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning.
Police blocked off about 10 rows of seats in section 201.
As reported by Vos Iz Neias