Foundlings [where do I come from...] Wednesday September 15 7:20 a.m 1999 Abandoned Baby Found in Culver City Church CULVER CITY, Calif., A baby boy was found at Saint Augustine Catholic Church on Washington Boulevard at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. A church custodian found the baby crying on a church pew. The baby's umbilical cord was still attached. The 8-pound baby, of Latino heritage, was taken to Children's Hospital in Hollywood. The child was listed in good condition. Jan. 3 2000 http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0103b.htm Baby abandoned in grocery A healthy newborn girl with her umbilical cord still attached was found abandoned on a shelf of diapers in a grocery store Sunday morning. The infant was named "Baby Maxine" by employees at Max Foods Grocery Warehouse, the food store on 1339 South Federal Blvd., where the infant was found wrapped in a blanket behind a stack of Huggies diapers, according to police and witness accounts. The infant was taken to Denver Health Medical Center where she was reported in fair condition. Doctors there said they believe the baby was not born in a hospital because of the attached umbilical cord. The baby was most likely born on New Year's Day or early Sunday, hospital officials said. Thursday, September 21, 2000, 02:36 p.m. Pacific Newborn abandoned in Puyallup PUYALLUP - A newborn baby girl was left with a stranger near a convenience store. The infant, apparently no more than an hour old, was handed to a woman last night by someone who may have been the mother near a store at Meridian and Valley Road. The child was taken to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma, where she was found to be hypothermic. The baby was hospitalized in serious but stable condition at the Tacoma General neonatal intensive care unit, located on the same premises as Mary Bridge. [Bouncing Baby] On February 28 2000, a 15 month old by plunged three storeys out a window in Tampa, Florida, but survived without a scratch. Kevin Molina fell 30ft (9m), landing on leaf-strewn grass. /Manchester (NH) Union Leader. 1 Mar 2000/ YELLOWKNIFE, Canada (AP) An 18-month-old toddler escaped with minor injuries after falling from a third-floor hotel window onto asphalt in the capital of Canada's sprawling Northwest Territory. The toddler apparently fell after climbing onto the window ledge to look outside on Saturday, in this town on the shore of the great Slave Lake, 1,800 miles north of Toronto. The window was open and when the child leaned on the screen it came free of the rails, causing both the screen and the child to tumble about 33 feet, police said. Police said the child was properly supervised and the fall has been ruled accidental. /[AP] 27 mar 2000/ FT108 10 Bouncing Baby An 18-month-old baby fell from a seventh-floor apartment in the south-eastern Spanish city of Murcia on 26 November 1997 and escaped with a broken tooth, contusion on its upper lip and bruises on its right cheek. The baby's fall was partly broken by laundry lines and glass panes covering the ground floor of the building. Paediatrician Jesus Rodriguez Caamano sent the baby home after five hours. /R 27 Nov 1997/ 18 month old Sabrina Taplin fell from a third floor flat in Rochester, Kent, after crawling onto a window ledge from a sofa. She fell 40ft (12m) onto concrete, but escaped with minor cuts and bruises. She had been saved by her nappy, which exploded on impact. /D. Telegraph, 21 June 2000/ A two year old Russian girl survived a nine storey 72 ft (22m) fall from a window in a Vladivostock apartment block. She suffered scratches and some broken bones, but nothing very serious. Dense grass and shrubs around the building broke her fall. /Eve Standard, 21 June 2000/ Ghost credited with breaking baby's fall WINNIPEG Dylan, who celebrates his third birthday soon, had climbed out of his crib and leaned against the window screen to see outside. The bottom of the screen, which was previously torn, gave way and Dylan tumbled through and into thin air. Dylan was released from hospital suffering only bruises. Doctors told Heather the tot's legs would be sore for a while, but otherwise he was fine. Both parents said they think Dylan landed feet first on the rain-soaked ground and deep grass before collapsing. "The ground conditions and the way he landed probably played a role in why he wasn't badly hurt, but I believe the main reason was the protecting spirit of his great grandfather," Heather said. Dylan, on the other hand, had a more straightforward explanation. "I fall. I get up." /Edmonton Sun, 10 July 2000/ FT107 8 Free fall: Lau Tim, aged three, escaped with minor fractures to her shoulders after falling 13 floors from a block of flats in Hong Kong. Her fall was broken by clothes lines and she landed on a corrugated iron canopy on the first floor /R 9 Nov 1997/ Bouncing baby boy 3-year-old Lateef Wise, Philadelphia, PA, was left home alone last week. At about 9:30 a.m., the frightened and crying boy pushed out the screen of an open window. Then he fell from the apartment, bounced off an air conditioner protruding from a second floor window and landed on a narrow strip of grass. After hitting the ground Lateef amazingly got up, began to cry and started walking around. Lateef was later released from a local hospital with just a minor larceration. The boy was left home alone due to a miscommunication between the parents. FT113 7 Falling Again: Ionut Ilie, six, from lasi in Romania, fell from the fourth floor of a block of flats and escaped with slight injuries. He had done the same thing at the age of one- falling from the first floor. We are not told how many floors the building has. /Evenimental Zilei (Romania) 11 Mar 1998/ FT136:12 Boy Blown off Highest Cliff Scott Durrant, 11, was winkle picking on a day out with his parents Martyn and Julie when he plunged over Boulby Cliffs, near Saltburn-by-the-sea, Cleveland, on 27 February. He was going back to the family car to shelter from gale-force winds when he was caught by a gust and fell 450ft (137m) down England's highest cliff. The last thing he remembers was dropping the keys on the edge of the cliff. A lifeboat was unable to see the boy from the sea, but a Sea King helicopter crew from RAF Leconfield, Lincolnshire, eventually spotted him lying unconscious among the boulders on the beach. he was airlifted to Middlesborough General Hospital. Surprisingly, his injuries were limited to minor cuts and bruises and three broken teeth. Martyn durrant said : "Doctors told us they have never heard of a case like it before"; obviously they don't read Fortean Times (see FT132:10 for the last round up). /Middlesbrough evening Gazette, d.Mail, Metro (London), 28 February; D.Telegraph, 28 Mar 2000. ICI worker Mr Durrant, 35, said: "It is a miracle that he has fallen so far and escaped. It's a million-to-one chance and Scott knows how lucky he is to still be here." [lets jump...] A suicidal man jumped from the third floor of the Krishnarajendra Hospital in India, hit the ground, stood up, ignored offers of help and walked unscathed back into the building. An X-ray and check-up revealed no injuries. The man had been referred to the Mysore hospital for major surgery but had told his wife he didn't want to go through with it, fearing he would die. /Metro, 5 July 2000/ On 23 June, an unnamed 22 year old Bosnain man, living in Ennetbaden, Switzerland, clibed onto the radiator of his attic room in an attempt to catch a fly- and slipped out of the window. He plunged 60ft (18m) into the Limmat River after bouncing off the roof of his building and the sunshade of a restaurant. The badly bruised man was fished out of the river by emergency services after neighbours raised the alarm. /[AP] 24 June 2000/ Window washer Kerry Burton, 27, fell five stories in Calgary, Alberta, when his rope mechanism failed. He landed in a bucket of water strapped to his bottom, and then bounced about 2ft (60cm). The bucket probably saved his life. /National Post (Toronto) 6 Nov 1998/ Ken Larsen, 34, was laying telecommunications cable on the roof of a five storey office building in walnut Creek, California, last March, walking backwards and pulling it. His co-worker, Rick Williver, who was holding the spool, yelled "Hold it a minute" but Larsen was already stepping back, and off the edge. Halfway to the ground, he realised he might survive. The cable he still clutched was slowing his fall. On the roof, Williver had thrown his weight against the spinning spool. After unwinding 65ft (20m) of cable and crashing through tree branches, Larsen had landed on his feet. "It felt like landing after a parachute jump" he said. His arm was scratched and his shoulder bruised, but nothing was broken. /[AP] 24 March 2000/ A 30 year old Ohio woman was pulling into a parking space in a multi-storey car park in Pittsburgh on 14 April 1999 when the brakes on her 1980 Buick Century failed. The car broke through a barrier and plunged seven storeys, landing on the sidewalk on the drivers side, collapsing the roof. It narrowly missed a man walking past, along with a bus and a car entering the garage. The woman was treated for eye and bone injuries, but everyone agreed it was a miracle she was still alive. /[AP] 16 April 1999/ Daniel Hudson, 34, a planning officer from Kendall in Cumbria, fell 1,000ft (305m) down Ben Nevis on 25 March, sustaining a broken arm and cuts and bruises to his face. "He fell and slithered about 500 feet, then crawled and fell a further 500ft, before landing in a burn." said John Stevenson of Lochaber Mountain Rescue. He was not found for five hours, which added hypothermia to his woes- but he still described himself as "the luckiest man alive". /Evening Standard 26 Mar 1999/ Flight Lieutenant Jeanine Godfrey, 35, was on an adventure training course in the Scottish Highlands on 18 January when she tripped on a crampon and fell 1,300ft (396m) down Summit Gully on Stob Coire nam Beith in Glencoe, suffering serious head, neck and back injuries. "She was sliding at a hell of a speed... totally out of control," said John Grieve, the mountain rescue team leader. "There is a barrier of jagged rock and boulders near the bottom. If you hit that you don't survive. She must have flown over the top. she came to a halt on an area which has odd patches of heather, snow and rock." He added: "People do fall down great big snow faces and get away with it. this is not like that. This is a twisting gully, like a massively steep Cresta run. You don't walk up it. I have known seven or eight people fall down that gully but all of them have died. There was no fresh snow which makes her survival all the more amazing." /D.Telegraph, Independent, 20 Jan 2000/ Ft103 7 Long Tumble: A Japanese woman recovered in hospital after falling 4000ft (1220m) down the snow covered slopes of 5646ft (1721m) Mount Rishi in the north of the country. Sachiko Ona, 58, suffered broken bones when she lost her footing. /Wolverhampton Express & Star, Edinburgh Evening news, 18 June 1997/ FT149:09 Just Plummet Lucky Craig Paton, 26, miracle escape on 7 April 2001 when his parachute failed to open at 3,200ft. Internal injuries, no broken bones. Scotsman, BBC Daily News, Daily Mail, 9 April 2001 Lynda Harding, 30, student at Hull University, fell 4,000ft 8 April 2001. Intensive care, full recovery in four weeks. Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, 4 May 2001 Paul Bodey, Sydney skydiver, 13,120ft on 24 March 2001. Spinal injuries and a punctured lung. South China Morning Post, 28 Mar 2001 Dave Clements, 45, Coventry Airport charity jump, 1,500ft. Broken arm and ribs, some internal injuries. Times, Daily Telegraph, 11 April 2001 Corporal Stuart Pearson, 26, paratrooper, 1,000ft, April. Expected to make a full recovery. Daily Mail, 16 April 2001 Kevin and Beverly MacIlwee from Jersey, 10,000ft, 3 June 2001. Injuries not life threatening. Broken bones in legs. Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2001