The Pittsburgh Pirates fan who fell over PNC Park’s 21-foot wall is awake enough to give his first interview nearly a week after his accident.
Speaking with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Kavan Markwood said he hasn’t watched any video of the fall that left him motionless on the warning track. He reportedly described his injuries as “broken everything” but said he is expected to be released from Allegheny General Hospital in about a week.
From the Tribune-Review:
“I’m all right,” he said. “I can’t really sleep. I have a lot of back pain.”
Markwood reportedly added that he’s grateful for the donors to his GoFundMe, which was organized by his girlfriend’s mother, Jennifer Phillips, and has raised more than $47,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
The fall created a haunting scene at PNC Park, and some questions about how it happened have since been answered. Witnesses have reportedly said Markwood was excited the Pirates were rallying, which led to him taking his shirt off and pouring beer on himself before an Andrew McCutchen at-bat.
While video showing the fall from a distance went viral the night of the incident, a different video that surfaced earlier this week, taken from behind Markwood’s front-row seat, reveals more about the incident. It shows a shirtless Markwood visibly energized, then he jumps up in reaction to McCutchen’s double and lands with much of his body weight on the railing in front of him. He quickly loses balance and falls forward.
It remains unclear how the 20-year-old Markwood obtained beer.
In a news conference Wednesday, AGH’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allan Philp, said Markwood sustained injuries to his brain, skull, spine, lungs and ribs, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Despite that, Philp said Markwood was doing very well, with much of the credit due to Markwood’s youth and the quick medical response at PNC Park.
Philp reportedly said Markwood is able to stand, walk and respond to questions, and he has already begun therapy for his brain injury, though he has a long road ahead of him. Via the Post-Gazette:
“So although he’s able to do activities of daily living, which is get up, walk to the bathroom, those kinds of things are painful,” Dr. Philp said. “Even in a young, healthy person, it’s going to take some time for those to heal. So he’s going to be limited in any aggressive kind of physical activity until those bones heal.
“His cognitive progress will be ‘harder to predict,'” Dr. Philp said. “He’s made really remarkable progress, but he’s not at a point where he’s at his baseline yet. And whether that’s going to take a week or a month or longer is really tough to tell.”
Markwood is a former first-team all-conference football player at South Allegheny High School, and he spent time on the rosters of Division II schools Walsh University and Wheeling University. Representatives of his teams and schools have spoken glowingly of his character in the aftermath of the incident.
Per the Tribune-Review, both of Markwood’s parents died young. His aunt, Juliette Och, is a nurse at Allegheny General Hospital and has called him the “epitome of strength,” per the Post-Gazette. Och actually saw video of the incident the night it happened and only found out the next day that it was her nephew. Markwood’s sister, Taryn, has also reportedly been in communication with him.
Due to the viral nature of the incident, Phillips has urged compassion in the bio of her GoFundMe:
“Our society has made it so easy to judge an individual or a situation with social media which is always just an opinion. Please always remember that this individual may be very special to many other people. Can you imagine what their loved ones are going through and feeling ? I know this young man very well and I know that he is very strong but he is also battling for his young life. Please be considerate during this tragic time.”
