Man survives plunge over Niagara Falls
A man survived a plunge over Niagara Falls with only the clothes on his back, witnesses said – the first person known to have done it and lived.
Witnesses described seeing the man float by yesterday in the swift Niagara River, go head-first over the churning 180ft waterfall and then pull himself out of the water on to rocks below.
“He just looked calm. He just was gliding by so fast. I was in shock really that I saw a person go by,” Brenda McMullen told WIVB-TV in Buffalo.
Water rushes over the falls at a rate of 150,000 gallons a second.
“I saw him disappear over the edge of the falls,” Mrs McMullen’s husband, Terry, said. The tourists, from Columbus, Ohio, snapped photographs afterwards, showing the man dressed in street clothes, apparently lying on the shoreline at the base of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls.
Only one other person is known to have survived a plunge over the Canadian falls without a barrel or other contraption: a seven-year-old boy wearing a life preserver who had been thrown into the water in a 1960 boating accident.
No-one has ever survived a trip over the narrower and rockier American falls.
Video shown by the Buffalo television station showed officers walking from the scene with a shirtless man in handcuffs and a blanket covering his face.
“At this point, there does not appear to be any evidence of foul play,” the Niagara Parks Police said in written statement.
Officers would not release the man’s name nor would they comment on why the man went over the Falls.
About a dozen daredevils have taken the plunge in barrels or other protective chambers since 1901. About half have survived.
Suicides are not uncommon at Niagara Falls, although police on both sides of the border are reluctant to give numbers.
Parks Police said emergency crews responded to a report of a man going over the Canadian falls at around 12.45pm. Rescuers descended the gorge in a tourist lift to an observation deck and reached him from there.
He was taken to Greater Niagara General Hospital, said police. Hospital spokeswoman Marilyn Bellows said the man was in a stable condition, according to the Canadian Press.
