Helpful Man Falls from 6th Floor Lands in Lazy River Walks Away

Great story-poorly written. “I fell off a 6th floor balcony in Myrtle Beach, landed in the lazy river, took a helicopter ride in bad weather and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” The headline doesn’t emphasize the HEIGHT of the balcony. Details about the “roof over the lazy river” that broke his fall are sketchy. Unclear is whether he landed in the Lazy River pool itself or in some bushes nearby. Records indicate 705 S. Ocean Boulevard is the location of the TROPICAL WINDS RESORT not the Tropical Sands Hotel. The pool photo is from the the Tropical Winds Resort site, which fits the slanting roof and bushes description-and makes the story even MORE amazing because he fell 4.5 floors and bounced off a GLASS roof. Nitpicking, err, fact checking aside it’s a great vacation story for the falling man and all witnesses because of the happy outcome.

Man falls from hotel balcony, walks away
By Jonathan Tressler | The Sun News
Posted on Sat, Aug. 04, 2007

Myrtle Beach police said a man was flown to an area hospital Friday night after he fell from a sixth-floor balcony at a South Ocean Boulevard motel.

The man was taken to New Hanover Hospital in Wilmington, N.C., after weather forced the flight to be diverted from another hospital, according to Myrtle Beach Detective Susan Baker.

The victim’s identity and condition were not available late Friday.

Witnesses to the fall, which happened about 8:30 p.m., said the victim got up afterward and walked away.

Emergency workers found him and rushed him to the hospital.

Witnesses estimated the man fell 4½ floors onto a roof over the lazy river at the Tropical Sands Hotel, 705 S. Ocean Boulevard.

Crystal Thorne of Lewisburg, N.C., said she offered assistance, but the man refused.

“I just heard this loud boom,” said Thorne, who was in the lazy river when the incident happened. “He landed in the lazy river. When I got out to look, he said he was OK and he got up by himself.”

A Roanoke, Va., woman, Tracy Weeks, said she was walking through the parking lot from a neighboring building when she saw that her son’s bathing suit, which had been hanging from their 11th-floor balcony, had blown off and landed on the ledge above the balcony from which the man fell.

She asked the man to try to reach it.

“He looked like he was tall enough to reach up and grab it, but he just lost his balance and flipped backwards, then grabbed the railing like he had it, then he lost it,” Weeks said.

The man slid off the slanted roof and into some bushes, breaking some bark off a palm tree.

“He said, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ He kept saying he was OK, but I saw him hit, hit, hit and I said he needs to be checked out,” she said.

Baker said the fall was the first reported from a balcony in Myrtle Beach in months. At least two other incidents occurred earlier this year, each resulting in death.

On June 10, a Lenoir, N.C., man fell to his death from a 12th-floor balcony of the Margate high-rise in the Kingston Plantation, and on June 13 a man died after falling from a seventh-floor balcony at the Captain’s Quarters hotel on South Ocean Boulevard.