NRW
For a selfie: 13-year-old falls through the roof of the gym and falls six meters deep
When she climbed onto a skylight, it gave way and she fell twenty feet (symbolic image)
© Christoph Hardt/Geisler-Fotopres/ / Picture Alliance
A 13-year-old fell through the roof of a school gym in Monheim on Sunday evening and fell six meters deep. Fortunately, her injuries were less severe than feared.
A group of five children aged 11 to 13 were out and about in Monheim in North Rhine-Westphalia on Sunday evening when one of them wanted to take a special photo. The 13-year-old climbed onto the gym roof of the Hermann Gmeiner School. When she climbed onto a skylight, the skylight gave way – and the girl fell twenty feet into the hall.
The fire brigade had to break open the hall and other doors in order to rescue the girl as quickly as possible. After being treated by an ambulance at the scene, he was taken to a hospital for treatment.
Serious accident: “luck in misfortune”
It is not known whether one of the other children with whom the 13-year-old was traveling made the emergency call. Fortunately, the girl was not injured as badly as one might expect from such a deep fall, a spokesman for the fire brigade reported.
“The child was lucky in the misfortune that it was a flat extension of the gym, namely the changing area, so that the fall height was only five to six meters,” says Torsten Schlender, head of the Monheim fire brigade, the Rheinische Post. In contrast, the ceiling height of the gym is more like ten meters. According to Schlender, the girl probably didn’t expect that the plastic skylights wouldn’t be able to support any weight.
Children were allowed to stay on school grounds
Peter Heimann, head of the school and sports department, assumes that the girl could have used a parapet in front of the hall entrance as a climbing aid to climb onto the gym roof. The fact that the children had gained access to the site was not illegal. “The school grounds are open and playable at least until nightfall at the weekend,” says Heimann.
source: “Rheinische Post“